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ZTbe  mniverstts  of 


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THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED   TO   THE   FACULTY 

OF   THE   GRADUATE   SCHOOL  OF   ARTS   AND   LITERATURE 

IN   CANDIDACY   FOR   THE    DEGREE   OF 

DOCTOR   OF   PHILO,-OT  II Y 

DEPARTMENT  OF  SYSTEMATIC  THEOLOGY  IN  THE 
GRADUATE  DIVINITY  SCHOOL 


BY 


ARTHUR  CLINTON  WATSON 


Private  Edition,  Distributed  By 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  LIBRARIES 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 


Reprinted  from 

THE  AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  THEOLOGY,  Vol.  XX,  Nos.  i,  2,  January, 

April,  1916;  Vol.  XXII,  Nos.  2,  3,  4,  April, 

July,  October,  1918 


EXCHANGE 


OA 


THntx>er8tts  ot  Cbicago 


THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY 

OF   THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  ARTS  AND  LITERATURE 

IN   CANDIDACY  FOR  THE   DEGREE   OF 

DOCTOR   OF   PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT  OF  SYSTEMATIC  THEOLOGY  IN  THE 
GRADUATE  DIVINITY  SCHOOL 


BY 

ARTHUR  CLINTON  WATSON 


Private  Edition,  Distributed  By 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  LIBRARIES 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 

Reprinted  from 

THE  AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  THEOLOGY,  Vol.  XX,  Nos.  i,  2,  January, 

April,  1916;  Vol.  XXH,  Nos.  2,  3,  4,  April, 

July,  October,  1918 


• 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION i 

II.  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  (Continued) 22 

III.  THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION 39 

IV.  THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  (Continued) 59 

V.  CONCERNING  METHOD 78 

APPENDIX  A:    ANIMISM  OR  "ANIMATISM" 94 

APPENDIX  B:    TOTEMISM 95 

APPENDIX  C:    MAGIC 96 

APPENDIX  D:    MYSTICISM 98 


iii 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION 

Reflection  is  evoked  by  the  discovery  that  "things  are  not  what 
they  seem."  Serious  speculation  as  to  the  nature  of  the  reality 
underlying  the  world's  appearances  began  with  Thale's  crude 
cosmology  and  ran  a  free  and  vigorous  course  to  the  time  of  Plato's 
idealism  and  Democritus'  atomism.  But  one  who  could  review 
with  some  degree  of  impartiality  the  various  conclusions  of  all  these 
metaphysical  speculations  found  a  new  problem  in  the  fact  that 
their  results  were  marked  by  such  a  glaring  lack  of  agreement. 
Such  divergence  as  culminated  in  the  antipodal  differences  between 
Plato  and  Democritus  surely  proved  the  failure  of  speculation  to 
arrive  at  truth.  Naturally  then  this  activity  of  thought  became 
itself  a  problem  of  investigation.  Greek  thought  had  come  to  an 
impasse.  It  was  time  for  someone  to  inquire  as  to  the  processes  of 
thought  whereby  truth  was  being  sought.  This  was  the  work  of 
Aristotle,  the  creator  of  logical  science.  There  had,  of  course, 
been  foreshadowings  of  it  in  the  need  felt  by  Socrates  and  Plato 
for  more  exact  definition  of  ideas  and  terms.  It  remained  for 
Aristotle  to  see  and  attempt  to  solve  the  general  difficulty  in  a 
large  and  permanent  way.  "Aristotle  made  the  great  step  in 

advance  ....  the  ripe  self-knowledge  of  Greek  science 

He  offers  an  examination  of  the  thinking  activity  on  all  sides,  a 
comprehensive  examination  of  its  regular  forms.  "x 

So  much  for  the  original  occasion  of  logic  in  the  narrower  sense 
as  a  branch  of  philosophy.  In  general,  a  similar  situation  is 
involved  in  the  development  of  any  department  of  human  activity. 
When  we  come  to  a  point  where  our  technique,  our  intellectual 
tools,  our  philosophy  of  the  conduct  in  question,  breaks  down  or 
involves  us  in  serious  embarrassment,  we  instinctively  turn  back 
upon  that  philosophy,  that  technique,  to  inquire  what  is  wrong 

1  Windelband,  Geschichte  der  Philosophic,  Engl.  trans,  by  Tufts,  History  of  Phi- 
losophy, 2d  ed.,  pp.  132,  133. 


LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

with  it  that  it  now  fails  to  solve  our  problems  or  accomplish  our 
tasks.  This  examination,  or  its  results  as  an  organized  system  of 
principles,  is  the  logic  of  the  activity  in  question,  be  it  the  logic  of 
thinking,  or  the  logic  of  science,  or  the  logic  of  morality,  or  the  logic 
of  religion. 

The  logic  of  religion  is  needed  at  the  same  strategic  moment  as 
is  the  logic  of  any  other  department  of  human  development,  namely, 
when,  on  the  one  hand,  after  much  groping,  successes  and  failures 
become  gradually  sifted,  main  lines  of  movement  become  distin- 
guished from  side  issues,  and,  in  general,  the  conditions  of  successful 
experimentation  become  more  and  more  clearly  recognized;  and 
when,  on  the  other  hand,  the  need  of  strong,  united,  and  unhesi- 
tating advance  has  become  urgent.  In  religion  we  have  now  some- 
what adequately  taken  stock  of  the  past  few  centuries  of  action  and 
reaction,  confused  groping  and  occasional  clear  glimpses  of  larger 
perspectives,  and  with  increasing  conviction  realize  the  imperative 
social  need  of  confident  and  comprehensive  progress.  Hence  our 
greatest  immediate  need  is  a  clear  apprehension  of  the  logic  of  the 
task  we  are  undertaking. 

We  need  religion,  probably,  as  much  as  any  age  can  have  needed  it.  The 
prevalent  confusion,  "the  tumult  of  the  time  disconsolate,"  is  felt  in  every 
mind  not  wholly  inert  as  a  greater  or  less  distraction  of  thought,  feeling,  and 
will;  and  we  need  to  be  taught  how  to  live  with  joy  and  calm  in  the  presence 
of  inevitable  perplexities.  A  certain  natural  phlegm  is  a  great  advantage  in 
these  days,  and  better  still,  if  we  could  get  it,  would  be  religious  assurance. 
Never  was  it  more  urgent  or  more  difficult  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men. 
Our  material  betterment  is  a  great  thing,  and  our  comparative  freedom  a 
greater,  but  these  rather  increase  than  dimmish  the  need  of  a  higher  discipline 
in  the  mind  that  is  to  use  them  profitably;  the  more  opportunities  the  more 
problems.  Social  betterment  is  like  the  advance  of  science  in  that  each 
achievement  opens  up  new  requirements.  There  is  no  prospect  that  the  world 
will  ever  satisfy  us,  and  the  structure  of  life  is  forever  incomplete  without 
something  to  satisfy  the  need  of  the  spirit  for  ideas  and  sentiments  that  tran- 
scend and  reconcile  all  particular  aims  whatsoever.  Mediaeval  religion  is  too 
unworldly,  no  doubt,  for  our  use,  but  all  real  religion  has  its  unworldly  side, 
and  Thomas  a  Kempis  and  the  rest  were  right  in  holding  that  no  sort  of  tan- 
gible achievement  can  long  assuage  the  human  soul. 

Still  more  evident  is  the  need  of  religion  in  the  form  of  "social  salvation," 
of  the  moral  awakening  and  leadership  of  the  public  mind.  Society  is  in  want 
of  this,  and  the  agency  that  supplies  the  want  will  have  the  power  that  goes 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  3 

with  function — if  not  the  church,  then  some  secular  and  perhaps  hostile  agency, 
like  socialism,  which  is  already  a  rival  to  the  church  for  the  allegiance  of  the 
religious  spirit.1 

This  is  not  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  Western  thought  that 
men  have  attacked  the  problem  of  clarifying  the  logic  of  religion. 
The  great  work  of  Thomas  Aquinas  is  significant  from  the  viewpoint 
of  present-day  progressive  thought  chiefly  for  its  crystallization 
of  the  logic  involved  in  the  religious  thought  of  the  Western  world 
up  to  his  day.  Others,  to  be  sure,  had  attempted  the  same  task, 
and  indeed,  somewhat  less  clearly,  attained  the  same  result. 

Hitherto  there  had  been  no  formal  distinction  between  the  domain  of 
philosophy  and  that  of  theology.  Thomas  laid  down  a  clear  line  between 
theology  and  philosophy,  between  natural  and  revealed  religion,  and  the 
province  of  reason  as  regards  both,  which  has  remained  in  force  among  thinkers 
of  all  creeds  ever  since.  Philosophy  passes  from  the  consideration  of  the 
creatures  to  God;  theology  passes  from  God  to  the  creature.2 

But  now  we  come  upon  evidence  that  this  Thomist  contribution 
to  the  logic  of  religion  is  no  longer  valid.  That  it  has  been,  up 
until  recently,  is,  to  be  sure,  quite  true.  But  theological  pioneers 
today  are  claiming  that  theology,  as  well  as  philosophy,  must  pass 
"from  the  consideration  of  the  creatures  to  God,"  that  theology 
must  be  inductive,  that  doctrine  must  be  formulated  empirically. 
We  are  demanding  a 

theology,  which  in  all  sincerity  asks  the  questions  which  are  pressed  from  the 
hearts  of  men ;  which  in  its  questioning  uses  fearlessly  the  best  methods  which 
critical  science  can  furnish;  which  insists  on  no  aristocratic  privilege  of  defi- 
nitely limited  authoritative  doctrines,  but  admits  gladly  to  its  precincts  any- 
thing which  compels  the  moral  adoration  of  men;  which  learns  gratefully  from 
the  past,  but  looks  to  a  better  future;  which  appreciates  the  service  rendered 
by  those  conceptions  of  God  and  of  salvation  which  have  emerged  in  history, 
but  confidently  believes  that  the  borders  of  our  knowledge  may  ever  be 
enlarged.3 

On  the  one  hand,  tbis  is  demanded  by  the  spirit  of  the  age,  and, 
on  the  other,  by  the  exigencies  of  the  theological  situation.  For  the 
formerly  credible  method  of  arriving  at  a  consideration  of  the 

1  Cooley,  Social  Organization,  p.  379. 

3  Workman,  Christian  Thought  to  the  Reformation,  p.  231. 

s  G.  B.  Smith,  Social  Idealism  and  the  Changing  Theology,  p.  243. 


4  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

creatures  from  the  consideration  of  God  has  been  discredited  by 
modern  knowledge  beyond  all  repair.  The  logic  of  the  Thomist 
system  needs  no  further  elaboration.  The  system  itself  is  utterly 
obsolete. 

Now  from  the  point  where  Catholicism  loses  connection  with  the 
advancing  thought  of  Modernism,  religion,  in  the  progressive  sphere, 
has  moved  on  instinctively,  without  a  conscious  logic  of  its  own 
movement.  For  several  centuries  it  has  been  groping  its  way, 
marked  by  inconsistencies  and  reactions,  but  surprisingly  vital 
in  many  directions.  But  more  and  more  the  inconsistencies  have 
become  embarrassing.  More  and  more  we  have  wanted  a  new 
theology  that  should  be  in  fact  as  new  as  the  new  world  of  Modern- 
ism. More  and  more  is  felt  the  need  of  apprehending  the  deepest 
logic  of  the  modern  religious  task.  To  put  it  baldly,  we  modern 
men  are  striving  to  make  ourselves  at  home,  religiously,  in  this  new 
world  of  modern  knowledge.  We  have  tried  to  move  much  of  the 
intellectual  furniture  of  the  old  world,  the  mediaeval  home,  into 
the  new,  only  to  find  it  increasingly  incongruous.  It  will  not  fit. 
We  have  not  made  ourselves  at  home.  Just  what  is  it  we  are  trying 
to  do  ?  We  feel  the  religious  craving  within  us;  we  get  help  from 
this  or  that  suggestion;  we  seem  to  make  some  progress,  but  feel 
much  perplexity.  The  whole  task  is  as  yet  tragically  incomplete. 
We  are  thrown  back  on  ourselves.  Just  what  is  it  we  need  to  do  ? 
In  a  word,  What  is  religion  ? 

Furthermore,  we  are  beginning  to  see  that  the  logic  of  a  modern 
religion  must  rest  upon  the  logic  of  all  religion.  We  understand 
the  logic  of  the  Catholic  system.  We  understand  also  the  logic  of 
secular  Modernism.  But  through  both  eras  men  feel  religious 
needs  and  find  religious  satisfaction,  and  what  we  do  not  yet  clearly 
understand  is  the  logic  of  religion  which  is  involved  in  both  these 
eras  and  underlies  both,  the  complete  system  of  Aquinas  and  the 
nascent  system  of  Modernism.  It  is  not  enough  to  seek  for  the  logic 
of  modern  religion.  We  have  come  to  a  place  where  the  very 
life  of  religion  is  threatened  by  the  sickening  sense  of  relativism 
which  modern  historical  research  so  largely  and  increasingly  fosters. 
If  we  are  but  seeking  one  sort  of  religion  to  replace  another,  an 
obsolete  sort,  this  self-conscious  relativism  threatens  the  very 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  5 

heart  of  religious  power.  What  we  need,  before  we  can  have  any 
sufficient  confidence  in  our  modern  religion,  whatever  it  may  prove 
to  be  when  matured,  is  a  knowledge  of  the  logic  of  religion  as  a 
whole.  We  are  confronted  with  three  vast  eras,  Paganism,  Catholi- 
cism, Modernism.  As  we  believe  in  the  continuity  of  experience, 
we  are  compelled  to  understand  the  principles  which  underlie  all 
three.  We  may  be  satisfied  to  understand  the  logic  of  other  phases 
of  human  experience  in  a  more  or  less  disjointed  way,  to  know,  for 
example,  the  logic  of  ancient  science,  the  logic  of  mediaeval  science, 
the  logic  of  modern  science,  but  the  very  heart  of  religious  satis- 
faction is  gone  if  we  thus  separate  the  religious  experience  of  one 
age  from  that  of  another.  For  the  logic  of  Mediaevalism  and  that 
of  Modernism  are  so  disparate,  the  former  seems  so  unreal,  so  futile, 
as  compared  with  the  latter,  and  yet  the  religious  experience  of  the 
mediaevalist  was  so  profound,  so  powerful,  that  our  effort  to  estab- 
lish a  modern  religion  is  likely  to  seem  to  ourselves  a  mere  tour 
deforce,  and  futile  at  that.  Yet  in  spite  of  the  self-consciousness  of 
our  effort  we  feel  that  the  same  great  forces  are  driving  us  forward 
which  compelled  the  mediaevalist  and  the  ancient  to  develop  their 
systems.  ( It  is  an  understanding  of  these  forces  on  the  most  inclu- 
sive scale  that  we  need>  It  is  the  logic  of  religion  that  we  must 
discover,  and  not  merely  the  logic  of  Paganism  or  the  logic  of 
Catholicism  or  the  logic  of  Modernism,  if  our  experience  is  to 
be  relieved  of  the  oppressive  self-consciousness  which  now  dis- 
heartens us. 

We  have  a  modern  religious  spirit  or  attitude  or  conscience,  but 
as  yet  practically  no  modern  religious  doctrine.  To  be  sure,  it  is 
only  slowly  and  with  great  difficulty  that  this  strictly  modern 
attitude  has  come  to  clear  expression.  It  is  as  yet  hardly  more  than 
an  awareness  of  the  moral  challenge  of  the  scientific  spirit  and  a 
desire  to  meet  that  challenge  if  possible.  It  is  not  yet  clear  how 
this  strictly  modern  attitude  can  produce  a  strictly  religious  con- 
tent. Science  and  religion  have  been  at  odds  so  long  that  now, 
when  a  truce  is  felt  to  be  desirable,  it  still  remains  doubtful  whether 
it  is  really  feasible.  Paganism  made  religion  the  affair  of  commerce 
with  an  invisible  world,  Catholicism  made  that  invisible  world  a 
strictly  "other"  world,  and  with  this  " other"  world,  for  fifteen 


6  '       THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

centuries,  religion,  as  the  chief  business  of  man,  had  entirely  to  do; 
and  now,  when  modern  knowledge  has  dissolved  that  "other" 
world  into  utter  unthinkableness,  and  has  made  cogent  the  demand 
for  an  inductive,  an  empirical,  theology,  has,  in  a  word,  thrown  the 
religious  nature  back  inevitably  upon  "this"  world,  the  religious 
thinker  is  for  the  time  being  embarrassed.  Before  we  can  go 
farther,  we  must  find  a  satisfactory  answer  to  the  question,  What  is 
religion  ? 

/  There  is  so  much  fundamentally  the  same  in  Catholicism  and 
traditional  Protestantism  that  the  logic  of  the  two  systems  may 
be  considered  identical,  at  least  in  the  most  important  elements. 

There  is  a  remarkable  unity  in  the  history  of  Protestant  thought  in  the 
period  from  the  Reformation  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  There  is 
still  more  surprising  unity  of  Protestant  thought  in  this  period  with  the  thought 
of  the  mediaeval  and  ancient  church.  The  basis  and  methods  are  the  same. 
Upon  many  points  the  conclusions  are  identical.  There  was  nothing  of  which 
the  Protestant  scholastics  were  more  proud  than  of  their  agreement  with  the 
Fathers  of  the  early  church.  They  did  not  perceive  in  how  large  degree  they 
were  at  one  with  Christian  thinkers  of  the  Roman  communion  as  well.  Few 
seem  to  have  realized  how  largely  Catholic  in  principle  Protestant  thought 
has  been.  The  fundamental  principles  at  the  basis  of  the  reasoning  have  been 
the  same.  The  notions  of  revelation  and  inspiration  were  identical.  The 
idea  of  authority  was  common  to  both,  only  the  instance  in  which  that  author- 
ity is  lodged  was  different.  The  thoughts  of  God  and  man,  of  the  world,  of 
creation,  of  providence  and  prayer,  of  the  nature  and  means  of  salvation  are 
similar.1 

Now  a  dualism,  "this  world"  and  "the  other  world,"  is  funda- 
mental to  this  logic  of  Catholicism  and  traditional  Protestantism. 
This  dualism  has  been  in  process  of  dissolution  for  a  long  time,  and 
in  degree  as  this  process  becomes  more  advanced  we  should  expect 
to  rind  the  question,  What  is  religion?  coming  more  and  more 
strategically  into  prominence.  And  this  is  exactly  what  has  hap- 
pened. The  last  century  witnessed  the  culmination  of  that  process 
of  dissolution,  and  it  was  Schleiermacher,  at  the  dawn  of  the  cen- 
tury, who  laid  the  foundations  for  a  new  epoch  in  theology  by 
asking  the  crucial  question, 'What  is  religion  ?  Kant  had  practically 
retired  the  age-old  dualism  and  so  had  felt  compelled  to  attempt 

1  See  E.  C.  Moore,  Christian  Thought  since  Kant,  p.  2. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  ^ 

to  re-define  religion.  But  both  definitions  retained,  though  with 
necessary  vagueness,  the  sense  of  an  "other"  world.  For  Kant, 
religion  was  a  sense  of  duty,  duty  with,  as  it  were,  overtones  of  a 
divine  imperative,  the  categorical  imperative  "within,"  which 
somehow  has  the  "intelligible"  ("other")  world  back  of  it.  For 
Schleiermacher,  religion  was  a  feeling  of  dependence  upon  a  God 
who  is  for  the  most  part  immanent  in  "  this  "  world,  and  yet  is  appre- 
hended through  the  God-consciousness  of  Jesus  which  has,  in  the 
final  analysis,  some  sort  of  alien  source.  Ritschl  also  wrestled  with 
the  problem  of  defining  religion,  spurning  both  metaphysics  and 
mysticism  as  the  sphere  or  channel  of  its  operation,  and  yet  striving 
to  save  it  from  being  swallowed  up  by  secularism.  The  discredit 
of  metaphysics  and  mysticism  was  essentially  the  discredit  of  the 
"other"  world.  The  vast  change  going  on  in  the  world- view  of  the 
century  is  reflected  in  the  most  characteristic  contribution  of 
Ritschl,  namely  in  his  doctrine  of  justification  and  reconciliation, 
according  to  which  salvation  is  essentially  a  matter  of  "this" 
world — a  matter  of  reconstructed  character,  not  of  "other  worldly" 
rescue.  Ritschl  defines  religion  as  a  sense  of  "values. "  Theology 
rests  upon  "  value- judgments, "  whereas  science  and  the  secular 
life  in  general  rest  upon  "existential  judgments."  But  in  Ritschl 
also  there  lurks,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  old  ontological  dualism. 
The  "other"  world,  from  the  days  of  its  creation  by  the  genius 
of  Plato,  has  been  a  "given"  world,  an  a  priori  world,  and  while, 
and  in  so  far  as,  it  remains  valid  for  religious  thinkers  the  definition 
of  religion  will  naturally  be  an  a  priori  conception.  Kant's,  Schleier- 
macher's,  Ritscl's  definitions  are  all  of  this  a  priori  sort.  As  the 
very  expression  "origin  of  species"  is  the  final  stroke  in  the  retire- 
ment of  Platonism,1  so  the  very  expression  "a  psychology  of  reli- 
gious experience"  is  the  final  stroke  in  the  retirement  of  the  habit 
of  conceiving  religion  as  a  bridging  of  that  gulf  which  the  old  dual- 
ism involves.  When,  about  fifteen  years  ago,  William  James  pub- 
lished his  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  a  most  significant 
milestone  was  reached.  In  place  of  a  priori  or  arbitrary  definitions 
of  religion,  the  attempt  was  begun  of  finding  an  inductive  definition 
by  the  application  of  psychological  study  to  the  phenomena  of 

1  See  Dewey,  Influence  of  Darwin. 


8  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

religious  experience.  While  some  psychologists  of  religion  are 
careful  to  defend  their  attempt  by  disclaiming  to  believe  that 
religion  has  no  extra-scientific  or  preternatural  reference,  this 
apology  cannot  hide  the  real  issue,  for  the  application  of  scientific 
method  to  the  study  of  religious  experience  logically  implies  the 
end  of  the  old  dualism.  The  " other"  world  is  not  "other"  if  it  can 
be  reached  by  a  religious  experience  which  is  itself  a  part  of  "this" 
world's  life — comes,  that  is,  really  under  the  cognizance  of  science. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  the  phraseology  of  the  title  of  this  epoch- 
marking  book1  is  suggestive  of  the  most  obvious  character  of  the 
whole  field  of  religious  experience,  most  obvious  and  perhaps  most 
discouraging  to  the  investigator  who  desires  to  find  a  definition^ 
The  "varieties"  of  religious  phenomena  are  indeed  bewilderingly 
numerous.  The  whole  field  of  pagan,  Catholic,  and  modern  types 
stretches  before  us,  subjective  and  objective,  feeling,  fact,  and 
fancy,  social  custom  and  individual  idiosyncrasy,  emotions,  activi- 
ties, beliefs.  It  is  little  wonder  if  this  branch  of  science  hesitates, 
is  hardly  yet  sure  of  having  a  really  scientific  method  of  procedure. 
Indeed  the  initial  difficult  is  to  say  what  is  rightful  material  for 
investigation.  What  is  religious  experience  ?  What  is  morality— 
what  is  mere  crass  custom — what  is  primitive  science  ?  Obviously 
some  tentative  conception  of  the  essential  character  of  religious 
experience  must  be  entertained  before  the  selection  of  material  can 
be  even  begun.  And  in  this  connection  it  is  noticeable  that  while 
so  far  there  is  no  unanimity  of  definition,  there  yet  is  a  very  large 
consensus  as  to  what  experiences  are  and  what  are  not  religious. 
Any  working  conception  of  the  essence  of  religion  must  first  of  all 
demonstrate  itself  in  this  field  of  unquestioned  religious  phenomena. 
The  final  test  of  the  definition  will  be  the  clarity  with  which  it  makes 
differentiation  possible  in  the  large  margins  of  debatable  material. 
More  explicitly,  the  two  chief  requirements  which  we  must  make 
of  any  definition  offered  are  these:  First,  it  must  account  for  the 
varieties  of  religious  experience;  that  is,  it  must  offer  a  simple  and 
satisfactory  clue  to  the  infinite  differences  of  expression  of  the  reli- 
gious life,  in  all  lands  and  in  all  ages,  and  thus  reveal  their  functional 
or  dynamic  identity.  In  the  second  place,  it  must  serve  to  differ- 

1  James,  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  9 

entiate  religion  from  morality,  science,  aesthetics,  or  any  other 
department  of  custom  or  culture.  Of  course  it  may  be  supposed 
by  some  that  the  identity  of  religion  is  not  merely  functional  or 
dynamic,  but  that  there  is  an  identity  as  it  were  of  content,  that, 
for  instance,  the  essential  mark  of  religion  is  a  belief  in  some  super- 
natural or  superhuman  agency,  i.e.,  the  deity  content.  But  the 
majority  of  the  psychologists  of  religion  claim  that  this  is  not 
tenable.  Again,  it  may  be  supposed  that' no  ultimate  differentiation 
between  religion  and,  say,  morality,  is  possible.  Ames's  con- 
clusion is  practically  that.1  But  as  there  is  an  almost  universal 
feeling  that  while  religion  and  morality  are  indisputably  very 
intimately  connected,  they  nevertheless  are  essentially  different, 
surely  no  definition  of  religion  which  does  not  explain  both  their  dif- 
ference and  their  intimate  connection  can  be  considered  adequate. 

The  first  of  these  two  requisites  of  a  definition  calls  for  further 
comment.  It  means  that  the  Hegelian  rather  than  the  Aristotelian 
logical  viewpoint  must  be  held,  that  a  " concrete"  rather  than  an 
"abstract  universal"  must  be  discovered. 

The  universals  of  the  traditional  subsumptive  logic  are  found 
by  analysis  and  abstraction,  the  discovery  of  identity  by  elimi- 
nation of  differences,  the  classification  of  species  under  genera  by 
attention  to  similarities  and  disregard  of  discrepancies.  It  gives 
the  "abstract  universal,"  the  quality  or  group  of  qualities  which 
account  for  or  include  the  similarity  of  the  various  species  in  the 
genus.  It  was  the  service  of  Hegel  to  formulate  a  theory  of  "con- 
crete universals."  It  is  significant  that  this  revolutionary  logical 
innovation  came  just  at  a  time  when  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species 
was  about  to  give  the  final  blow  to  the  Platonic  world- view  which 
was  the  metaphysical  background  of  the  Aristotelian  logic.2 
Whereas  the  "abstract  universal"  dealt  with  species  generically, 
the  "concrete  universal"  deals  with  them  genetically  or  at  least 
organically.  The  former  is  based  on  identities,  the  latter  is  based 
on  differentiation.  The  former  looks  for  a  means  of  classification, 
the  latter  for  a  means  of  control.  The  one  depends*  upon  analy- 
sis of  a  "given,"  the  other  seeks  for  the  secret  of  creating  new 

1 E.  S.  Ames,  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience. 

3  See  Dewey,  The  Influence  of  Darwin  on  Philosophy,  chap.  i. 


io  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

experience.  The  first  looks  for  the  common  elements  in  similar  re- 
sults, the  second  looks  for  the  reason  for  the  differences.  The  one  be- 
longs to  a  static  world,  the  other  to  a  changing,  growing  world.  The 
one  deals  with  completed  structures,  the  other  with  living  functions. 
The  one  relies  upon  authority,  whether  the  authority  is  a  " given" 
of  the  philosopher's  insight,  as  Aristotle  thought,  or  of  the  prophet's 
vision,  miracle-attested,  as  the  theologian  claimed,  or  of  a  system  of 
truth,  as  the  ecclesiastic  held.  The  other  relies  upon  experiment, 
exploration,  discovery;  it  is  the  logic  of  science.  The  one  talks  of 
essence,  substance,  "nature,"  being.  The  other  talks  of  activities, 
uses,  functions,  life.  Principal  Caird  gives  the  following  descrip- 
tion of  Hegel's  concrete  or  organic  universal. 

This  deeper  and  truer  universality  is  that  which  may  be  designated  ideal 
or  organic  universality.  The  idea  of  a  living  organism  is  not  a  common  element 
which  can  be  got  at  by  abstraction  and  generalization,  by  taking  the  various 
parts  and  members,  stripping  away  their  differences,  and  forming  a  notion  of 
that  which  they  have  in  common.  That  in  which  they  differ  is  rather  just 
that  out  of  which  their  unity  arises  and  in  which  is  the  very  life  and  being  of 
the  organism;  that  which  they  have  in  common  they  have,  not  as  members  of 
a  living  organism,  but  as  dead  matter,  and  what  you  have  to  abstract  in  order 
to  get  it  is  the  very  life  itself.  We  do  not  reach  it  by  first  thinking  the  par- 
ticulars, but  conversely  we  get  at  the  true  notions  of  the  particulars  only  through 
the  universal.1 

In  the  first  place,  the  " varieties"  of  religious  experience  are  so 
infinitely  various  that  if  the  method  of  abstraction  is  used  there  is 
little  or  no  hope  of  rinding  the  residual  identity ;  and  in  the  second 
place,  if  such  could  be  found  it  would  necessarily  be  so  vague,  so 
utterly  "  abstract, "  as  to  furnish  no  valuable  clues  in  attacking  our 
own  peculiar  twentieth-century  reconstructive  problem.  The 
abstraction  of  a  bare  " deity"  content,  as  the  mark  of  all  religious 
experience,  even  if  it  were  defensible,  is  impotent  in  our  present 
situation.  The  validity  of  theism  is  the  very  crux  of  our  recon- 
structive problem.  It  is  no  help  to  be  told  simply  that  to  be  reli- 
gious we  must  have  a  God.  Those  who  have  had  their  theism 
dissolved  by  modern  knowledge  are  thus  thrown  back  upon  the 
alternative  of  irreligion,  while  nevertheless,  in  the  agonies  of  their 

1  Caird,  Introduction  to  Philosophy  of  Religion,  1891,  p.  218;  see  also  Royce,  The 
Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  pp.  222  ff. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  II 

enforced  atheism,  they  feel  themselves  to  be  poignantly  religious. 
What  they  need  is  such  an  understanding  of  their  religious  hunger 
as  will  afford  some  clear  line  of  attack  upon  the  very  heart  of  their 
problem,  some  immediately  workable  line  of  procedure  which  they 
may  patiently  and  without  embarrassment  explore. 

It  would  not  be  surprising  if  among  the  earliest  attempts  to 
define  religion  inductively  a  mixture  of  these  two  viewpoints  should 
result — an  " abstract"  universal  which  is  superficially  " dynamic. " 
And  indeed  this  is  what  we  find  in  a  definition  which  has  had  con- 
siderable influence  in  recent  discussions — Hoffding's  character- 
ization of  religion  as  "the  conservation  of  values."  This  view 
regards  religion  as  a  function  of  society  whose  nature  is  seen  in  its 
most  general  results.  That  is,  after  reviewing  the  whole  field  of 
religious  activities,  the  conclusion  is  reached  that  the  only  thing 
which  can  be  said  of  religion  which  is  true  in  all  cases  is  that  these 
various  religious  activities  tend  to  "conserve  values."  But  the 
abstract  and  impotent  character  of  this  definition  is  evident  the 
moment  we  ask  what  such  a  conception  means  when  applied  to 
our  present  reconstructive  task.  What  is  religion  for  us  ?  It  is  a 
conservation  of  values.  What  shall  we  do?  We  must  practice 
such  religious  exercises,  hold  such  religious  beliefs,  as  shall  tend  to 
conserve  the  "values"  of  life  which  are  regarded  as  in  some  way 
involved.  Now  if  it  be  felt  that  all  traditional  forms  of  religion 
have  become  impotent  to  conserve  our  felt  "values"  (and  this  is 
just  the  core  of  our  modern  difficulty),  we  are  accordingly  forced 
to  consider  the  invention  of  such  forms  of  worship  and  such  doc- 
trines as  may  prove  effective  hi  the  situation.  But  surely  the 
artificiality  of  such  a  position,  the  self-consciousness  of  such  an 
undertaking,  is  utterly  embarrassing.  Moreover,  it  is  not  apparent 
how  religion  differs  from  any  other  department  of  life,  for  surely 
science  and  morality  are  no  less  truly  means  of  "conserving  values. " 
In  spite  of  the  apparently  "concrete"  character  of  this  "universal," 
its  dynamic  appearance,  its  evolutionary,  functional  terminology, 
Hoffding's  definition  is  really  an  "abstract"  universal;  it  deals 
fundamentally,  not  with  the  cause  of  differences,  but  with  residual 
similarities.  It  is  essentially  static.  It  reviews  results  rather  than 
concrete  motives,  it  deals  with  consequences  rather  than  impulses. 


12  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

It  is  an  abstraction  from  finished  systems  rather  than  an  insight 
into  underlying  motivation.  No  doubt  it  is  entirely  true  that,  as 
James1  at  the  outset  of  this  whole  investigation  pointed  out,  there 
is  no  specific  religious  " nature,"  no  peculiar  "religious  instinct"; 
nevertheless  we  do  not  profoundly  understand  either  religion  or 
any  other  human  experience  unless  we  see  it  from  its  instinctive 
side  rather  than  from  that  of  its  overt  activities  and  achieved  results. 
There  is  a  great  practical  difference  between  the  questions,  What 
is  the  function  of  religion?  and  Of  what  is  religion  the  function? 

The  author  of  this  study  believes  that  he  has  to  suggest  a  defi- 
nition of  religion  entirely  different  from  any  that  have  hitherto 
been  put  forward,  and  one  which  (i)  is  broad  enough  to  include 
practically  all  the  phenomena  which  the  various  psychologists  of 
religion  have  fastened  upon  as  religious;  (2)  is  practical  enough  to 
suggest  a  natural  method  of  differentiation  in  those  marginal 
regions  where  religion  seems  indistinguishable  from  morality,  or 
science,  or  art;  (3)  is  "concrete"  enough  to  explain  the  endless 
variation,  in  form  and  content,  of  religious  experience;  and  (4)  is 
so  dynamic  as  to  simplify  our  present  reconstructive  task  and  to 
suggest  the  most  promiseful  lines  of  advance. 

But  before  stating  it,  let  me  further  describe  the  "abstract" 
method  in  contrast  with  which  this  definition  will  be  proposed. 

The  deductive,  merely  descriptive  character  of  this  "abstract" 
method  is  most  clearly  seen  in  the  results  of  Professor  Wright's 
analysis.2  He  points  out  that  there  are  three  types  of  definition 
thus  far  proposed :  the  first  following  the  general  direction  of  Hoff- 
ding's  solution,  the  second  insisting  on  the  supernatural  or  super- 
human agency  as  an  ever-present  factor,  and  the  third  giving  the 
chief  importance  to  the  "feeling"  element.  Professor  Wright 
argues  that  each  of  these  is  correct  with  reference  to  some  large 
mass  of  facts,  and  that  if  we  are  to  find  a  definition  which  shall 
disregard  no  single  religious  fact  we  must  include  each  of  these  three 
factors.  He  therefore  defines  religion  as  "the  endeavor  to  secure 
the  conservation  of  socially  recognized  values  through  specific 

1  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 

a  "A  Psychological  Definition  of  Religion,"  American  Journal  of  Theology,  XVI 
(1912),  385. 


TEE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  13 

actions  that  are  believed  to  evoke  some  agency  different  from  the 
ordinary  ego  of  the  individual  or  from  other  merely  human  beings, 
and  that  imply  a  feeling  of  dependence  on  this  agency."1 

Now  Dr.  Wright  himself  seems  to  feel  the  abstract  and  merely 
descriptive  character  of  this  generalization  though  not  willing  to 
admit  its  futility.  He  says:  " Perhaps  the  reader  now  feels  that 
after  all  the  definition  merely  affords  a  descriptive  formulation  of 
religion  and  assists  in  placing  it  in  a  classification  along  with  other 
disciplines,  but  that  it  does  not  throw  much  light  upon  the  questions 
in  which  he  is  most  interested.  "2 

Now  the  " abstract  universal"  is  just  as  legitimate  in  its  place 
as  the  "  concrete. "  The  Aristotelian  logic  has  had  such  a  long  life 
because  it  is  just  the  everyday  attitude  which  we  take  toward  the 
well  known  and  familiar.  It  sums  up  experience  in  useful  and 
concise  concepts.  It  is  at  home  in  the  periods  of  authority.  The 
major  premise  is  essentially  the  epitomized  custom  of  the  group.3 
The  "abstract  universal"  is  useful  when  what  is  wanted  is  a  more 
facile  use  of  accumulated  experience  or  a  reinforcing  of  a  long- 
accepted  custom  or  truth.  And  that  just  this  is  the  problem  which 
Dr.  Wright  has  in  mind  becomes  evident  in  the  latter  part  of  his 
monograph.  He  holds  that  the  use  of  such  a  definition  will  enable 
us  to  discover  that  religion  has  always  been  more  or  less  successful 
in  conserving  social  values  (though  to  be  sure  it  has  oftener  than 
not  done  so  unconsciously  by  other  means  than  those  which  it  was 
explicitly  employing,  " suggestion"  rather  than  the  deity  being  the 
real  agency) ;  has  generally  produced  a  certain  amount  of  social  and 
moral  solidarity  and  conservatism  with  the  group;  has  often 
fostered  a  less  sordid  type  of  life  than  otherwise  might  have  pre- 
vailed; and  has  helped  to  enrich  and  expand  the  personal  life. 
And  so  he  is  interested  in  showing  the  importance  of  preserving, 
for  the  sake  of  general  social  usefulness,  the  function  of  religion  as 
a  conservational  force  tending  to  maintain  our  higher  values.  His 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  388,  392.  *  Op.  cit.,  p.  402. 

3  Cf.  "The  Concept  in  its  very  generality  ....  is  the  conserver  of  the  experience 
of  the  past.  It  is  the  custom  of  the  past  put  into  capitalized  and  funded  form  to 
enable  the  individual  to  get  away  from  the  stress  and  competition  of  the  needs  of  the 
passing  moment"  (Dewey,  Influence  of  Darwin  on  Philosophy,  p.  293). 


14  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

remarks  on  the  metaphysical  validity  of  religion  reveal  the  same 
attitude.  On  any  one  of  the  three  types  of  philosophical  foundation 
which  contemporary  thought  affords,  religion,  he  thinks,  can  claim 
to  be  dealing  with  reality  in  general  and  so  is  worthy  of  confidence 
and  support.  "In  a  word,  the  social  and  personal  usefulness  of 
religion  once  established,  the  question  of  its  metaphysical  validity 
will  largely  take  care  of  itself.  "*  In  short,  the  present  need  seems 
to  this  writer  to  be  to  deduce  the  social  value  of  religion  today  from 
the  generalization  that  religion  is  a  useful  social  institution.  This 
is  so  characteristic  of  contemporary  apologists  that  its  significance 
for  the  logic  of  the  situation  should  be  carefully  noted.  If  the 
continuance  of  religion  as  a  social  institution  is  the  heart  of  our 
problem,  then  the  deductive  logic  must  have  its  way,  and  an 
abstract  universal  is  the  sort  of  definition  that  we  need.  But  if 
the  problem  is  actually  much  more  acute  than  that,  if  it  is  expressed 
in  its  most  crucial  form  in  a  widespread  need  of  individuals  rather 
than  in  a  general  social  indifference;  if  the  core  of  the  difficulty  for 
a  multitude  of  the  most  earnest  and  thoughtful  persons  is,  not 
"Shall  we  continue  to  be  religious?";  but  rather  "How  can  we 
continue  to  be  religious  ?  " ;  if  the  metaphysical  question  is,  not  of  the 
validity  of  religion  in  general,  but  of  the  validity  of  the  individual's 
beliefs  and  practices  in  particular;  then  surely  the  logic  needed  is 
an  inductive  logic,  and  the  abstract  definition  is  not  adequate  to  the 
present  situation.  Moreover,  it  is  impossible  to  find  an  abstract 
definition  without  retaining  some  one  or  more  of  the  elements 
of  the  content  of  the  religious  experience  of  the  past  from  which 
the  generalization  is  made,  if  at  least  the  definition  is  to  have 
any  semblance  of  real  working  value.  Hoffding's  definition,  for 
instance,  does  not  help  us  on  our  way  in  the  explicit  religious  per- 
plexities which  confront  us.  It  simply  gives  us  a  broader  acquaint- 
ance with  religion  as  it  has  been;  it  does  not  discover  anything  new. 
This  weakness  is  apparently  overcome  in  Wright's  definition  by 
the  addition  of  the  element  of  belief  in  the  other-than-merely-human 
agency  which  is  evoked  by  the  religious  activity.  This  is  simply 
some  deity  or  its  equivalent.  But  this  is  a  pure  a  priori,  as  far  as 
the  poignancy  of  the  present  situation  is  concerned.  Everyone 
1  Op.  tit.,  p.  409. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  15 

admits  the  helpfulness  of  believing  in  the  co-operation  of  some  deity. 
But  that  only  adds  to  the  embarrassment  of  the  present  problem, 
for  the  very  crux  of  the  difficulty  is,  "  What  God  can  I  believe  in  ?" 

In  its  simplest  statement,  I  would  say  that  religion  is  a  social 
attitude  toward  the  non-human  environment.  The  quality  of  religion 
will  of  course  vary  with  the  degree  of  organization  of  the  social 
attitude  and  with  the  dimensions  of  the  non-human  environment; 
with  the  degree  in  which  the  various  social  attitudes  are  habitual 
and  customary,  or  purposeful  and  conscious;  with  the  extent  to 
which  the  non-human  environment  has  been  personified  by  the 
social  imagination  or  depersonalized  by  the  rational  processes 
induced  by  failure  of  habitual  adjustments. 

Or  to  state  it  otherwise :  Broadly  speaking,  the  most  far-reaching 
and  important  distinction  which  we  make  regarding  the  world  we 
live  in  is  that  line  which  we  draw  between  "man"  and  "not  man"; 
while  our  relations  to  environment  fall  into  two  classes,  first,  social 
adjustments,  mostly  made  toward  our  fellow-men,  and,  secondly, 
mechanical,  manipulatory  adjustments,  which  are  mostly  made 
toward  the  things  about  us.  The  first  constitute  the  sphere  of 
morality,  the  second  constitute  the  sphere  of  science.  But,  of 
course,  these  spheres  are  not  water-tight  compartments;  there  are 
endless  cross-currents.  For  example,  we  may  take  the  mechanical 
attitude  toward  men  and  treat  them  as  things  (which  is  either 
non-moral  or  unmoral).  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  inevitable  that 
sometimes  we  take  a  social  attitude  toward  the  non-human  environ- 
ment. Within  this  latter  general  set  of  relations  is  the  sphere  of 
religious  experience.  Violent  or  sudden  stimulus  tends  to  arouse 
the  whole  organism  to  activity,  so  that  any  situation  which  tran- 
scends the  efficiency  of  our  acquired  mechanical  attitudes  tends  to 
call  forth  the  larger  organic  response,  or  social  attitude.1  The 

1  It  is  not  meant  of  course  that  the  mere  muscular  exertion  of  the  whole  body  is 
necessarily  a  social  attitude.  What  is  meant  is  that  the  more  the  resources  of  the 
entire  organism  are  challenged,  the  more  the  response  tends  to  assume  the  social 
quality.  Briefly,  the  reason  for  this  is  the  predominance,  both  in  number  and  in 
importance,  of  the  social  instincts.  The  social  environment  of  primitive  man  is  com- 
posed of  both  animals  and  men.  Wild  beasts  and  savage  foes  require  alertness  of  the 
whole  organism  to  escape  or  overcome  danger.  Moreover,  the  welfare  of  childhood, 
both  in  primitive  and  in  civilized  life,  depends  much  more  upon  successful  social 


1 6  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

mechanical  attitudes  are  attitudes  of  only  parts  of  the  organism, 
whereas  the  social  attitudes  are  attitudes  of  the  whole  organism. 
The  most  mechanical  activity  may  develop  into  one  genuinely 
social,  as  difficulty  is  encountered  and  vital  needs  are  at  stake. 
For  instance,  a  savage  is  trying  to  lift  a  log.  At  first  the  action 
is  merely  muscular,  quite  mechanical,  and  devoid  of  emotional 
interest.  But  the  log  is  heavy  or  it  rolls  out  of  the  arm's  grasp 
or  it  falls  back  on  the  man's  foot  and  threatens  to  crush  that  mem- 
ber. In  other  words,  as  the  difficulty  of  the  enterprise  increases, 
as  the  struggle  proceeds,  it  becomes  dangerous  to  his  very  life. 
Gradually  or  suddenly  the  whole  organism  becomes  more  and 
more  involved,  so  that  at  last  the  savage  regards  the  log  as  he  would 
regard  his  bitterest  foe,  with  hatred,  anger,  suspicion.  This  social 
attitude  is  expressed  in  a  curse  or  a  final  kick,  fear  or  grinning 
triumph.  It  is  not  otherwise  with  a  civilized,  sophisticated  human. 
We  stoop  mechanically  to  pick  up  some  slippery  object,  but  say 
things  under  our  breath  when  it  eludes  our  grasp  with  the  appear- 
ance of  diabolic  cunning.  So  one  may  curse  the  loose  board  of  a 
plank  sidewalk  which  trips  him  up;  or  one  may  apostrophize  some 
object  in  nature,  as  I  heard  a  friend  do  recently,  on  a  fine  morning 
in  the  Rockies,  "0!  you  grand  old  mountains!"  In  this  realm 
of  social  attitudes  toward  the  non-human  is  the  sphere  of  religion.  We 
do  not  today,  of  course,  dignify  by  the  name  religion  the  anger 
which  one  may  feel  toward  the  door  which  the  wind  slams  in  his 
face,  but  the  same  attitude  in  primitive  man  we  call  animism1  and 
feel  that  if  animism  is  not  exactly  religion,  it  is  at  least  the  stuff 
out  of  which  religion  is  evolved.  Neither  do  we  call  it  religion 
when  someone  of  a  poetical  temperament  breaks  out  in  speech  to 


adjustments  than  upon  mechanical  adjustments.  The  power  of  the  gregarious  and 
sex  interests  is  obvious.  Further,  the  mechanical  adjustments  are  developed  and  con- 
trolled largely  by  the  reflex  equipment,  and  hence  unconsciously,  whereas  the  more 
important  social  adjustments  require  continuous  attention.  Hence,  in  general,  the 
more  vitally  our  physical  environment  stimulates  us,  the  more  is  our  whole,  funda- 
mentally social,  nature  aroused.  A  social  stimulus  awakens  what  I  may  call  the 
pan-organic  response.  On  the  other  hand,  the  pan-organic  response,  even  though 
aroused  by  physical  stimulation,  is  social  in  its  tone.  This,  very  briefly,  is  my  defense 
for  using  the  expression  "the  larger  organic  response,  or  social  attitude." 

1  Or  more  strictly  "animatism,"  to  use  Marett's  term. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  17 

a  mountain  or  the  moonlight ;  yet  the  very  same  attitude,  if  organ- 
ized into  a  social  habit,  elaborated  more  or  less  in  ritual  or  defended 
by  doctrine,  we  should  not  hesitate  to  call  a  religion,  "a  sun-cult," 
or  what  not. 

It  is  admitted  that  a  very  hard-and-fast  line  of  distinction  cannot 
be  drawn  between  the  two  types  of  attitude,  the  social  and  the 
mechanical,  nor  between  the  two  types  of  environment,  human 
and  non-human.  There  are,  to  be  sure,  mechanical  phases  of  every 
social  attitude,  as  in  the  handclasp  of  friendship  some  of  the  same 
motor  reactions  take  place  as  in  the  use  of  a  hammer  or  saw.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  social  quality  never  seems  to  recede  very  far 
from  the  surface  of  mechanical  adjustments,  as  in  the  use  of  tools 
and  materials  the  workman  is  not  always  utterly  indifferent  to 
them — he  is  likely  at  any  moment  to  exhibit  a  sort  of  fondness  for 
them  or  impatience  with  them.  So  too  with  the  human  and  non- 
human  environments.  We  bestow  affection  upon  our  favorite 
dog  or  horse,  we  talk  to  the  bird  or  the  cat.  Every  employer  feels 
the  power  of  the  " economic  man"  theory,  in  his  temptation  to 
treat  workmen  as  so  many  tools,  mere  " things,"  to  be  hired,  used, 
cast  aside;  in  the  crowded  streets  we  pass  most  passers-by  as 
indifferently  as  we  step  aside  to  avoid  a  lamp-post  or  other  non- 
human  obstacle.  What  is  claimed  in  this  study  is  not  that  these 
lines  of  distinction  can  be  drawn  with  unwavering  definiteness  and 
secure  fixity,  but  that  these  are  the  poles,  as  it  were,  about  which 
our  activities  cluster;  these  are  the  foci  about  which  our  life  swings, 
the  contour  of  action  being  apparently  closer  now  to  this,  now  to 
that,  center  of  control.  Indeed,  to  push  this  last  suggestion  a  little 
bit,  one  might  say  that  as  the  one  focus  of  the  ellipse  and  its  more 
adjacent  curve  may  represent  social  responses  toward  the  human 
environment,  and  the  other  focus  and  its  more  adjacent  curve  may 
represent  mechanical  responses  to  the  non-human  environment,  as 
the  curve  is  never,  save  at  two  bare  points,  obedient  to  the  one  or 
the  other  focus  exclusively,  so  our  life  is  never,  save  at  two  bare, 
logically  but  hardly  empirically  real,  points,  obedient  exclusively  to 
either  the  social  or  the  non-social,  never  either  starkly  mechanical 
nor  utterly  social;  and  it  is  just  this  cross-reference,  so  to  speak, 
this  response  of  the  curve  at  one  extremity  to  the  focus  at  the  other, 


18  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION  ' 

this  rising  and  falling  stimulation  of  the  social  responses  by  the 
non-human  environment,  that  constitutes  the  realm  of  religion. 

Having  roughly  outlined  the  logical  limits  of  religious  experience 
as  being  "social  attitudes  toward  the  non-human  environment," 
some  further  explanation  is  now  necessary.  Obviously  much  falls 
within  that  general  scheme  today  which  we  should  not  call  religious, 
although,  as  I  suggested  above,  any  example  of  similar  attitudes, 
found  in  the  dim  primitive  past,  would  probably  be  considered 
religious.  It  will  throw  light  on  this  phase  of  my  task  to  look  at 
morals  and  science  from  the  general  viewpoint  suggested.  There 
are  the  two  types  of  environment,  the  human  and  the  non-human, 
and  the  two  types  of  reaction,  or  attitude,  the  social  and  the  mechan- 
ical. Within  the  general  sphere  of  social  attitudes  toward  the 
human  environment,  morality  develops;  within  that  of  the  me- 
chanical or  non-social  attitudes  toward  the  non-human,  science; 
within  that  of  social  attitudes  toward  the  non-human,  religion.  Now 
in  all  these  there  are  two  chief  considerations  which  must  be  kept 
in  mind.  The  first  is  the  fact  that  specialization  or  development 
throws  some  activities  into  prominence,  and  the  importance  of 
these  is  the  criterion  as  to  how  far  they  are  worthy  of  the  adjectives 
moral,  scientific,  or  religious,  respectively.  Special  activities  are 
at  first  elicited  by  problem  situations  and  are  at  that  stage  imbued 
with  emotional  interest.  Often  these  same  activities  tend  to 
become  merely  habitual,  the  emotional  interest  in  them  wanes,  and 
they  gradually  fade  into  that  vast  mass  of  routine  which  is  com- 
paratively colorless.  For  instance,  any  deviation  from  the  group 
custom  is  primitive  immorality.  But  deviation  today  is  not 
immoral  unless  it  refers  to  actions  which  still  retain  or  have  come 
to  have  emotional  interest.  An  eccentric  mode  of  dress  will  be  an 
idiosyncrasy  or  an  immorality  according  to  the  degree  in  which  it 
arouses  the  emotional  interest  of  the  group.  Similarly,  a  new 
method  of  registering  fares  on  a  street  car  will  be  regarded  at  first 
as  a  scientific  device,  but  later  will  be  so  commonplace  and  unin- 
teresting as  to  seem  unworthy  of  the  name  scientific.  So,  too,  it  is 
the  common  criticism  of  the  perfunctory  observance  of  religious 
rites  that  such  mere  habit  is  unworthy  the  name  of  true  religion. 
It  is  therefore  necessary  to  discover  what  are  the  factors  that  make 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  19 

any  experience  or  activity  within  the  general  logical  sphere  of 
religion  more  or  less  religious.  And  no  extraneous  principle  must 
be  brought  in  to  vitiate  the  fundamental  simplicity  of  the  logical 
situation.  The  explanation  lies  first  of  all  in  the  implications  of 
the  expression,  "a  social  attitude."  " Social"  attitudes  vary  all 
the  way  from  the  instinctive  automatisms  of  animals  in  their  group 
behavior,  the  mating  of  robins,  the  scout  duties  of  the  lookout  crow, 
the  snarls  of  quarreling  dogs,  the  admonitory  paw-slaps  of  the 
maternal  cat,  up  to  the  rhetorical  flights  of  the  patriot,  the  exquisite 
solicitude  of  a  noble  parent,  the  sympathetic  handclasp  of  a  loyal 
friend.  But  the  element  which  makes  the  latter  human  rather 
than  merely  animal  is  the  mergence  in  a  man  of  a  "  self  "-con- 
sciousness. This  "self-consciousness  varies  in  organization, 
sensitiveness,  and  other  qualities  from  the  quasi-animal  beginnings 
in  the  child  or  the  savage  up  to  the  noblest  character  of  Christian 
maturity.  Now  this  is  the  key  to  the  problem  of  the  specifically 
moral  action  within  the  general  sphere  of  social  attitudes  toward 
the  human  environment.  We  say  that  any  action  is  moral  rather 
than  non-moral  in  so  far  as  the  self  is  actively  and  consciously 
present  therein.  To  turn  to  the  similar  religious  problem,  we  would 
say  that  in  any  social  attitude  toward  the  non-human,  the  attitude 
is  more  or  less  religious  according  to  the  degree  in  which  the  "self- 
consciousness  is  organized  and  active.  But  even  as  morality 
depends  for  its  degree  of  moral-ness,  not  only  upon  the  self  factor 
but  also  upon  the  quality  of  the  human  environment  within  which 
the  self  is  active,  so  any  experience  is  more  or  less  religious  in  pro- 
portion as  the  non-human  environment  with  which  the  self  makes 
adjustment  is  large  or  small,  important  or  trifling.  Even  as  we 
say  that  the  highest  morality  is  incompatible  with  provincialism, 
that  a  man  is  not  thoroughly  moral  if  he  neglects  the  ballot,  that 
though  charity  begins  at  home  it  cannot  stay  there,  that  the 
business  man  who  has  never  seen  beyond  his  factory  walls  is  as  yet 
to  that  extent  non-moral,  so  too  the  greater  the  scope  of  the  non- 
human  to  which  the  self,  the  moral  organism,  adjusts  itself,  the 
more  is  that  adjustment  worthy  the  name  religious. 

A  further  word  or  explanation  is  in  order  here.     Every  vital 
situation  has  two  chief  stages :  the  problem  stage  in  which  active 


20  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

readjustment  is  demanded  and  the  solution  stage  in  which  the 
activities  which  emerge  through  reflection  or  experiment  go  on 
until  some  new  problem  arises.  Now  the  tendency  of  activities 
once  established  to  become  habitual  is  useful  so  long  as  the  situation 
continues  which  called  them  forth  and  in  which  they  are  efficient. 
This  situation,  however,  may  cease  to  exist,  while  the  habitual 
activities  go  on  of  their  own  momentum.  So  long  as  the  situation 
lasts,  the  activity  is,  though  habitual,  worthy  the  name  " moral"  or 
"religious,"  as  the  case  may  be,  but  when  the  situation  ceases  to  exist 
the  habitual  activity  becomes  mere  meaningless  routine,  and  less 
and  less  worthy  the  name  "moral"  or  "religious."  The  point  is 
that  "moral"  and  "religious"  are  essentially  vital  terms  in  that 
they  imply  a  situation  of  great  interest  and  importance  and  are 
more  and  more  applicable  within  their  respective  logical  spheres 
in  degree  as  the  adjustments  contemplated  or  achieved  are  of  pro- 
found and  far-reaching  significance. 

Again,  the  expression  "non-human"  will  readily  be  understood 
to  refer  in  general  either  to  nature  or  the  supernatural,  the  so-called 
physical  universe  which  we  directly  experience  or  the  so-called 
spiritual  world  which  we  experience  by  faith  or  imagination.  A 
social  attitude  to  such  a  world  beyond  the  sensuous  as  Christianity 
has  conceived  is,  of  course,  natural  and  inevitable,  since  it  is  just 
as  truly  a  social  environment  as  the  human.  A  social  attitude 
toward  nature  so  long  as  there  is  this  divine  social  environment 
beyond  nature  is  for  the  most  part  unnecessary  and  unnatural, 
since  nature  is  ipso  facto  comparatively  devoid  of  importance. 
The  heart  of  the  modern  religious  situation  is  just  this,  that 
historico-psychological  research  has  of  late  increasingly  revealed  the 
processes  by  which  that  other  or  divine  world,  that  social  environ- 
ment beyond  nature,  was  built  up  by  the  social  imagination  of  primi- 
tive man,  philosopher,  and  saint,  while  at  the  same  time  scientific 
technique  and  scientific  theory  have  revealed  the  unexpected 
importance  and  vast  but  inescapable  horizons  of  this  world.  Our 
non-human  environment  is  now,  at  least  in  our  critical  and  non- 
traditional  moods,  not  the  supernatural,  but  nature.  Much  con- 
fusion has  resulted  from  the  fact  that  the  traditional  adjustments 
have  gone  on  of  their  own  momentum,  after  the  real  situation  was 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  21 

vastly  changed.  But  it  is  not  enough  to  point  out  this  fact,  as  so 
many  have  been  so  busy  doing,  and  conclude  that  since  our  largest 
environment  is  now  no  longer  social  we  need  no  longer  take  a  social 
attitude  toward  it,  or,  in  other  words,  need  no  longer  be  religious. 
Whereas  the  divine  social  environment  in  which  man  has  so  long 
lived  has  immensely  fostered  his  growing  sense  of  selfhood  or  moral 
self-consciousness,  both  democracy  and  science  have  taken  up  and 
carried  much  farther  this  thing  that  the  traditional  otherworldliness 
had  been  doing.  Modern  life  is  much  more  self-conscious,  man 
is  much  more  aware  of  himself,  with  the  historical  background  which 
Darwinism  suggests  than  with  the  scheme  of  the  Book  of  Genesis. 
Over  against  this  self-conscious  modern  man  is  nature,  with  its  vast 
unplumbed  significance;  and  a  moral  reaction,  a  social  attitude, 
a  "self  "-adjustment  thereto  is  no  less  inevitable,  though  apparently 
vastly  more  difficult,  than  in  the  "ages  of  faith/7  when  man's  all- 
inclusive  horizon  was  a  divine  society.1 

1  For  the  suggestion  of  the  general  idea  of  the  distinction  between  the  social  and 
non-social  environments,  and  between  the  social  and  mechanical  attitudes,  I  am 
indebted  to  Professor  G.  H.  Mead's  lectures  in  social  psychology. 

It  may  seem  to  the  reader  that  a  social  attitude  to  the  non-human,  if  that  non- 
human  be  "nature"  or  the  "world,"  that  is,  a  social  attitude  toward  a  non-social 
environment,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  and  religion  consequently  impossible  or  an 
absurdity.  This  is  of  course  the  crux  of  the  constructive  problem,  which  waits  for 
some  further  investigation  of  the  whole  matter  of  our  social  and  mechanical  adjust- 
ments out  of  which  have  probably  come,  respectively,  our  apparently  contradictory 
sets  of  teleological  and  mechanistic  concepts.  For  further  reference  to  this  point, 
see  succeeding  chapters. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  (Continued} 

I  have  defined  religion  as  a  social  attitude  toward  the  non-human 
environment,  and  have  shown  somewhat  in  detail  the  meaning  of 
this  definition. 

I  shall  now  attempt  a  fuller  description  of  my  position  by 
contrasting  it  with  some  representative  results  of  contemporary 
psychological  treatment. 

A.  First,  let  me  make  some  further  reference  to  the  work  of 
Professor  Wright.  "The  values  of  religion  are  all  in  some  sense 
moral  values."1  True,  certainly.  But  why?  If  religion  is  the 
conservation  of  socially  recognized  values,  why  does  it  not  seek  to 
conserve  the  vast  industrial  interests  of  the  land  ?  No  values  are 
more  fully  recognized  socially.  Yet  Dr.  Wright's  definition  does 
not  suggest  why  these  should  not  today  be  a  matter  of  concern 
to  religion,  nor  why  the  values  with  which  it  is  concerned  should 
always  be  in  some  sense  moral.  But  if,  as  I  have  suggested,  religion 
is  a  social  attitude  toward  the  non-human  environment,  the  "self  " 
is  always  involved;  and  where  the  self  is  involved,  the  situation  is 
ipso  facto  "in  some  sense  moral."  Moreover,  whereas  ancient 
industry  was  very  often  and  very  largely  a  matter  of  concern  to 
religion,  modern  industry  is  not,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the 
manipulation  of  the  sources  of  wealth  is  now  a  matter  of  science, 
inasmuch  as  non-social  or  mechanical  attitudes  have  been  found  by 
men  to  be  vastly  more  efficient  with  reference  to  such  things  than 
the  earlier  social  attitudes  were. 

Again,  "as  society  advances  the  general  tendency  is  for  religion 
increasingly  to  conserve  the  more  important  ethical  values."2 
But  why  ?  If  my  thesis  is  sound,  the  reason  for  the  phenomenon 
here  referred  to  is  at  once  patent.  The  "self-consciousness,  the 

X"A  Psychological  Definition  of  Religion,"  American  Journal  of  Theology,  XVI 
(1912),  399. 

a  Ibid.,  p.  400. 

22 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  23 

moral  tone  of  the  group  or  the  individual,  at  any  given  stage  of 
development,  is  the  same  whether  the  organism  is  adjusting  itself 
to  the  human  or  to  the  non-human,  and  the  ethical  values  which 
are  the  more  important  in  one  case  will  also  be  more  important  in 
the  other.  This  statement,  i.e.,  that  the  "self  "  is  identical  in  both 
the  human  and  the  non-human  situations,  of  course  is  not  abso- 
lutely exact,  for  the  self  is  ever  fluctuating  within  rather  wide 
limits,  shrinking  or  expanding,  waxing  or  waning  in  vigor,  and  this, 
for  the  most  part,  in  response  to  the  social  environment.  There 
are,  however,  limits;  there  is  at  any  period  in  social  evolution,  as  it 
were,  a  "mean  temperature"  of  selfhood  or  moral  tone  common 
to  the  individual  and  his  group  and  in  large  areas  of  experience. 
Though,  in  general,  it  may  be  said  that  the  morals  of  the  divine 
society  lag  somewhat  behind  those  of  the  human  group  whose  social 
imagination  has  created  it  (and  naturally  so,  since  the  constructive 
imagination  cannot  work  without  materials,  and  those  materials 
must  first  be  produced  in  the  social  experience  of  the  group), 
nevertheless  there  are  more  or  less  definite  psychological  limits 
within  which  the  human  and  the  divine  codes  agree.  Herein  is  the 
logical  explanation  of  both  the  truth  and  the  indefiniteness  thereof, 
in  the  statement  that  the  tendency  is  for  religion  to  conserve  the 
more  important  ethical  interests.  A  selfhood  in  which,  for  instance, 
purity  has  become  integral  will  demand  purity  in  its  divine  social 
environment;  and  when  purity  is  once  established  in  the  divine 
society,  it  will  react  powerfully  for  the  fuller  establishment  of 
purity  in  the  human  group.  Again,  the  proverbial  conservatism 
of  religion  is  explained  by  the  same  facts.  For  the  self  must  be 
evolved  in  the  human  social  milieu  before  it  can  function  in  the 
larger  non-human  environment.  The  unseen  world  is  compara- 
tively static  because  it  is  changed,  not  by  concrete  fact  immediately, 
but  only  indirectly  by  the  slow-moving  logic  of  the  earthly  facts. 
The  construction  of  a  divine  world  is  a  slow  and  arduous  process,  and 
is  made  stable  and  solid  by  reason  of  the  very  importance  of  the 
self's  interests  which  are  localized  there.  Once  completed  and  per- 
fected, it  holds  the  imagination  of  individuals  and  of  generations  in 
thrall,  and  the  protests  of  conscientious  iconoclasts  make  little 
impression  on  it.  To  demand  that  religion  be  less  conservative 


24  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

is  to  fail  to  realize  the  ponderous  proportions  of  its  task.  "Rome" 
may  fairly  epitomize  the  general  scheme  of  Western  orthodoxy,  and 
"Rome  was  not  built  in  a  day. "  Various  structures  in  the  Eternal 
City,  such  as  atonement,  God,  salvation,  may  be  more  or  less 
remodeled  with  comparative  ease  (though  even  here,  at  close 
range,  the  cost  in  energy  and  earnestness  seems  incalculable),  but 
such  a  wholesale  reconstruction  as  is  demanded  by  the  seismic 
shake-up  which  modern  science  and  psychology  have  produced  will 
not  be  undertaken  until  all  effort  to  live  among  the  ruins  has  become 
too  obviously  futile,  and  some  consciousness  has  dawned  of  the 
resources  of  the  human  nature  which  builded  this  city  in  the  past. 
Another  question  which  Dr.  'Wright's  essay  raises  and  on  which 
my  thesis  throws  light  is  that  of  the  relation  of  religion  and  aes- 
thetics. For  him  they  are  utterly  different  and  distinct.  "The 
differences  between  aesthetics  and  religion  are  so  great  and  their 
resemblances  so  superficial  that  one  wonders  how  the  two  ever  have 
been  confused.  The  blunder  ....  that  these  features  [i.e., 
music,  frescoes,  etc.],  the  merest  external  adornments  and  veriest 

accidents   of   religion,   constituted   her  heartfelt  purpose 

The  religious  endeavor  is  never  an  end  in  itself  ....  aesthetic 
contemplation  is  interesting  on  its  own  account:  it  is  an  end  in 
itself."1  Now,  if  they  are  so  distinct,  how  account  for  their 
apparent  close  union?  Why  is  it  that  some  religious  persons  so 
vehemently  insist  that  religion  is  not  a  matter  of  aesthetics,  while 
others  as  earnestly  assert  that  it  is?  If  they  are  not  the  same, 
they  are  at  least  inextricably  interwoven  on  abundant  evidence. 
Let  me  again  appeal  to  my  thesis.  Religion  is  an  adjustment  of 
the  self  to  its  non-human  environment.  Now  in  every  adjustment 
there  are  three  logically  distinct  phases:  (i)  the  initial,  "problem," 
stage,  in  which  emotion,  ideation,  and  volition  are  all  active  and 
preponderant;  (2)  the  smooth  working  out  of  the  solution,  in  which 
emotion  dies  down  into  interest,  and  the  actions  are  automatic 
and  habitual  rather  than  volitional,  and  the  intellectual  processes 
proper  are  comparatively  unnecessary;  (3)  the  appreciative 
or  "economic"  stage,  in  which  satisfaction  is  experienced  by 
means  of  the  successful  solution  and  its  actualization.  These 

*0p.  cit.y  p.  401. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  25 

successive  phases  may  be  traced  in  both  physical  and  social  situa- 
tions, and  in  any  social  adjustment  whether  with  the  human 
environment  or  with  the  non-human.  It  extends  to  large  epochal 
adjustments  as  well  as  to  the  individual's  experience.  The 
aesthetic  epochs  are  those  in  which  successful  experience  tends  to 
symbolize  its  satisfactions.  They  are  the  flowering  forth  of  great 
cultural  or  moral  or  religious  achievements.  So  we  have  the  art 
of  the  Greek  period,  of  the  Renaissance,  of  today.  Obviously  an 
experience  is  an  end  in  itself,  in  degree  as  it  passes  into  the  third,  or 
"economic,"  phase  of  adjustment.  Thus  in  many  instances  a 
religious  mood  is  an  "end  in  itself,"  as  some  mystical  types  of 
devotion  so  well  attest.  It  is  just  as  impossible  to  regard  the  classic 
Christian  mood  of  "communion  with  God"  as  having  some  ulterior 
motive  as  to  think  of  the  experience  of  conjugal  felicity  or  the  inter- 
course of  ideal  friendship  as  being  a  means  to  an  end  rather  than 
an  end  in  itself.  But  so  also  religious  experience  may  have  the 
general  character  of  the  first  or  problem  stage  marked  by  stress  and 
strain  and  great  intellectual  and  emotional  activity,  or  of  the  calm 
but  interestful  second  stage  when  the  adjustment  activity  is  in 
process  of  actualization. 

A  further  quotation  from  Dr.  Wright's  essay  will  help  me  to 
make  my  meaning  clearer.  "Ages  of  comparative  religious 
shallowness  like  the  Italian  Renaissance  have  often  produced  the 
finest  religious  art ;  while,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Puritans,  movements 
of  deep  religious  earnestness  have  sometimes  rejected  the  services 
of  art  altogether. "z  My  thesis  suggests  that  to  call  one  "shallow" 
and  the  other  "deep"  is  to  miss  the  real  comparison.  The  Italian 
Renaissance  is  the  culmination  of  a  long  process  of  religious  adjust- 
ment, whereas  the  Puritan  movement  is  the  beginning  of  another. 
The  first  is  religious  adjustment  or  experience  in  the  "economic" 
stage;  the  latter  is  religious  experience  in  the  "problem"  stage. 
The  one  very  naturally  expresses  its  overripe  "satisfaction"  or 
•successful  accomplishment  in  the  symbols  of  sacred  art.  The 
other  in  the  strenuous  period  has  no  sense  of  ripe  accomplishment 
as  yet  to  symbolize,  but  has  all  its  energies  absorbed  in  the  practical 
task  on  hand.  To  call  the  one ' '  shallow ' '  and  the  other ' '  deep  "  is  as 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  400. 


26  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

inadequate  as  to  say  that  the  relaxed  mood  at  the  end  of  a  hard 
day's  work,  when  one  goes  over  the  day's  deeds  in  reverie  or  in  con- 
versation, is  ''shallow"  as  compared  with  the  sweat  and  dust  of  the 
hours  of  toil.  They  are  both  normal  phases  of  the  total  situation. 
Similarly,  periods  of  moral  reconstruction  have  their  strongly 
contrasting  " problem"  and  "economic"  phases.  We  fight  the 
great  fight  of  slavery  and  years  later  express  our  appreciation  of 
the  importance  and  success  of  the  task  in  sculpture,  painting,  and 
architecture.  We  undertake  vast  industrial  problems  and  soon  the 
sense  of  having  made  a  beginning  at  least  finds  expression  in  a  great 
mural  decoration.  Important  discoveries  are  lived  over  again  in 
pageantry.  So  the  artistic  impulse  is  a  normal  phase  of  moral 
as  well  as  of  religious  evolution.  And  in  passing,  it  might  be 
pointed  out  how  the  individual  aesthetic  experience  may  be  regarded 
as  religious.  The  aesthetic  impulse  in  the  individual  regarded  from 
the  organic  functional  standpoint  is  simply  the  result  of  racial 
experience  incorporated  in  the  nervous  structure  of  the  individual 
organism.  The  sense  of  beauty  is  organic  and  instinctive,  builded 
up  by  many  generations.  (It  may,  of  course,  be  liberated  by  educa- 
tion. The  matter  of  art  as  a  technique  of  symbolization  is  aside 
from  the  psychological  understanding  of  the  aesthetic  nature.) 
But  what  in  its  simplest  terms  is  the  appreciative  attitude  which 
many  people  instinctively  take  toward  a  " beautiful"  landscape 
but  the  hereditary  responsiveness  of  the  organism  toward  favorable 
environment  ?  This  is  of  the  physical  type.  The  appreciation  of 
a  beautiful  or  noble  face  is  an  aesthetic  impulse  of  the  moral  type. 
The  sensitive  soul,  however,  may  gaze  upon  a  beautiful  landscape 
with  emotions  that  he  himself  cannot  define  but  as  religious. 
What  has  happened  to  make  the  aesthetic  moment  religious? 
A  sense  of  selfhood  has  arisen  as  he  gazes.  It  is  no  longer  merely 
aesthetic,  because  the  organism  is  so  aroused  as  to  make  a  total, 
that  is  to  say,  a  social,  reaction  over  against  the  non-human. 
The  aesthetic  feeling  blends  into  the  religious.  Such  an  aesthetico- 
religious  experience  is  typically  expressed  in  the  lines: 

The  clouds  that  gather  round  the  setting  sun, 
Do  take  a  sober  coloring  from  the  eye 
That  hath  kept  watch  o'er  man's  mortality. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  27 

B.  Let  us  next  consider  Irving  King's  The  Development  of  Relig- 
ion.1 This  author  thus  defines  religion:  "The  religious  conscious- 
ness is  a  special  development  of  the  valuational  attitudes2  ....  a 
special  development  of  the  valuational  type  of  consciousness.  "3  It 
is  obvious  that  such  a  statement  involves  the  necessity,  first,  of 
distinguishing  between  the  practical  and  the  valuational  attitudes; 
and  secondly,  that  of  differentiating  that  special  type  of  the 
latter  which  is  religious  from  other  types  of  the  valuational 
consciousness. 

Now  the  primary  criticism  to  be  made  upon  Professor  King's 
position  is  that  his  distinction  between  " practical"  and  " valua- 
tional" is  entirely  artificial.  For  the  larger  part  of  the  valuational 
moments  of  consciousness  are  as  truly  practical  as  anything  else. 
Indeed,  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  the  more  " appreciation"  we  have 
of  a  situation  of  danger  or  object  of  desire  the  more  intensely 
"  practical"  it  ipso  facto  is. 

The  trouble  with  this  term  " valuational "  or  "appreciative" 
is  that  it  may  properly  refer  to  three  different  aspects  of  activity. 
In  the  first  place,  any  action  in  its  third  or  "economic"  stage  is 
practically  a  mood  of  appreciation.4  In  the  second  place,  the 
pleasure-discomfort  tone  which  accompanies  most,  if  not  all,  sen- 
sations is  the  organism's  instinctive  "evaluation"  of  its  stimuli. 
When  this  affective  tone  is  very  intense,  we  may  sometimes  describe 
it  as  "appreciative";  for  example,  one  "appreciates"  a  good  square 
meal  when  very  hungry,  one  "appreciates"  a  fire  on  the  hearth 
after  being  out  in  the  cold,  damp  night,  one  "appreciates"  a  danger 
when  its  perilous  aspects  have  fully  aroused  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation.  In  the  third  place,  the  emergence  of  "self- 
consciousness  renders  any  attitude  appreciative  or  valuational  in 
proportion  as  the  "self"  is  highly  organized  and  explicit.  This 
is  of  course  the  most  important  of  the  three  factors,  and  it  is  this 
which  is  the  real  explanation  of  the  importance  of  social  life  in 
developing  a  sense  of  "values"  on  which  King  so  constantly 
insists.  "The  sense  of  value  itself  is  so  thoroughly  bound  up  with 

1  The  Development  of  Religion.    New  York:  Macmillan,  1910. 

2  Op.  tit.,  p.  63.  3  ibid.,  p.  44- 
4  See  discussion  above,  p.  25. 


28  TEE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

social  activities  that  it  may  almost  be  called  a  social  category."1 
But  he  does  not  see  that  the  most  important  result  of  social 
intercourse  is  the  creation  of  self-consciousness,  and  hence  the  real 
psychological  connection  between  the  social  milieu  and  the  sense 
of  value  is  lost.  It  is  indeed  true  that  "the  particular  function  of 
the  social  element  is  in  giving  stability  and  depth  to  the  values 
brought  to  consciousness  through  the  rise  of  intermediate  activi- 
ties,"2 but  do  not  these  values  acquire  "stability  and  depth"  just 
because  they  become  the  values  not  merely  of  physical  organisms 
but  of  social  "selves"? 

Professor  King  himself  seems  to  admit  that  he  has  not  made 
a  very  successful  differentiation.  For  instance,  he  says:  "It 
[religion]  originates,  it  is  true,  to  a  certain  extent  in  the  practical 

life  of  a  people It  is  true  that  the  feelings  of  appreciation 

thus  gained  may  be  carried  over  and  used  in  very  pressing  and 

practical  situations Prayer  and  sacrifice,  although  in  a 

way  practical  expedients,  are  also  just  as  truly  expressions  of  an 

appreciative  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  worshiper One 

mode  of  reaction  will  in  many  cases  be  sure  to  merge  with  the 

other "3  The  artificiality  of  this  distinction  between 

practical  and  valuational  attitudes,  as  such,  accounts  for  some  of 
the  strained  positions  he  is  compelled  to  assume.  For  instance: 
"Were  religion  a  practical  expedient,  it  would  have  died  out,  as 
magic  is  doing  with  the  growing  sense  of  inutility.  "4  But  religions 
do  die  out  with  the  growing  sense  of  their  inutility.  Religion,  in 
the  general  sense  of  what  the  various  religions  have  tried  to  do,  does 
not  die  out  and  it  is  equally  true  that  what  magic  tried  to  do 
does  not  die  out.  King  himself  calls  magic  primitive  man's  science, 
and  the  continuity  of  the  general  function  which  magic  attempted 
is  just  as  real  as  and  no  more  real  than  the  continuity  of  the  general 
function  of  mankind  which  we  call  religion. 

Passing  now  to  the  second  task  of  differentiation  which  King's 
position  involves,  how  does  he  distinguish  between  those  valuational 
attitudes  which  are  religious  and  those  which  are  not  religious  ?  In 

1  Op.  tit.,  p.  64.  3  Op.  tit.,  pp.  172  ff. 

2  The  Development  of  Religion,  p.  70.         *  Ibid.,  p.  172. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  29 

general,  it  seems  to  be  simply  a  question  of  the  degree  of  social 
importance.  "As  certain  of  these  values  stand  out  and  acquire 
great  prominence  in  the  social  consciousness,  they  become  in  so  far 
religious,  and  the  activities  which  were  before  only  practical  expe- 
dients are  now  transformed  into  religious  ceremonials."1  Or  to 
put  it  otherwise,  religious  values  are  ultimate  values.  "That  the 
social  organization  is  practically  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  primitive  man's 
life  is  a  most  important  point  for  the  development  of  religious 

values  out  of   those  of   less   degree Psychologically   the 

values  of  the  group  are  not  only  higher  than  those  of  the  individual, 
they  are  genuinely  ultimate  and  universal.  This  is  our  argument 
in  a  nutshell.  "2  As  for  modern  man,  "  the  religious  attitude  may  be 
said  to  be  the  consciousness  of  the  value  of  action  in  terms  of  its 
ultimate  organization.  "3  In  a  word,  since  religion  is  "the  apprecia- 
tion of  the  more  permanent  and  far-reaching  values,"4  the  more 
permanent  and  far-reaching  the  values  at  stake  the  more  are  they 
to  be  considered  religious.  But  surely  this  does  not  by  any  means 
clearly  distinguish  between  religious  and  moral  or  scientific  values. 
The  very  case  he  cites  of  the  Greenland  Eskimo  seems  to  me  to 
expose  this. 

The  social  assemblies  of  the  Greenland  Eskimos  are  good  examples  of 
''accessory"  activities,  and  their  social  and  aesthetic  value  is  so  great  and 
their  function  as  an  institution  of  social  control  is  so  evident  that  they  may  be 
considered  as 'religious  rites.  The  Eskimos  have,  on  the  other  hand,  many 
habits  connected  with  their  hunting,  but  these  depend  so  clearly  upon  individual 
skill  and  painstaking  practice  and  the  conditions  under  which  they  are  called 
forth  are  so  acute,  that  they  continue  almost  of  necessity  quite  definably 
"practical,"  and  hence  non-religious.5 

Now  a  technique  for  social  control  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  of 
"more  permanent  and  far-reaching"  value  than  a  technique  for 
obtaining  food,  nor  can  it  be  said  to  be  less  "practical,"  so  that 
neither  King's  primary  nor  secondary  criterion  for  religion  seems 
to  be  operative  in  this  case.  Indeed,  the  distinction  in  this  case 
is  based  upon  other  consideration  than  those  suggested  in  the 

1  Op.  tit.,  p.  82.  «  Ibid.,  p.  65. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  68.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  100,  101. 

<*.,  p.  85. 


30  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

criterion  of  "ultimacy. "  "  Their  social  and  aesthetic  value  is  so 
great  ....  that  they  may  be  considered  religious  rites."  This 
seems  to  suggest  that  religious  and  aesthetic  are  very  much  the 
same  thing,  a  question  to  which  more  explicit  attention  will  be 
given  shortly.  Meanwhile  it  should  be  noted  that  other  criteria 
are  also  introduced  as  well  as  this  aesthetic  quality.  "That 
these  are  ostensibly  religious  ceremonies  is  indicated  by  their 
definitely  prescribed  character  and  by  the  various  symbolic  acts 
which  are  intermingled  with  the  more  useful  expedients.  "x  Surely 
fixity  of  form  and  symbolical  representation  are  very  different  from 
ultimacy  of  value  as  a  touchstone  for  the  religious  quality  of  any 
activity.  And  why  might  not  a  purely  moral  value  find  expression 
in  a  "definitely  prescribed"  or  "symbolic"  activity?  It  is  indeed 
just  the  powerlessness  of  this  definition  and  the  somewhat  similar 
one  of  Professor  Ames  to  reveal  any  logical  distinction  between 
religion  and  morality  that  I  find  most  objectionable.  "Morality, 
as  its  etymology  suggests,  refers  also  to  the  customary,  and  on  this 
ground  we  may  argue  with  much  assurance  for  the  view  that 
primitive  religion  and  primitive  morals  are  but  two  sides  of  the 
same  thing.  "2  But  if  the  distinguishing  mark  of  religious  values  is 
their  ultimacy,  how  does  this  separate  religion  from  the  aesthetic  ? 
It  was  suggested  above  that,  in  the  quotation  referred  to,  they 
seemed  to  be  practically  identical.  The  question  of  the  difference 
between  them  King  considers  on  page  84 : 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  difference  between  them  is  one  of  rela- 
tionships rather  than  of  intrinsic  content.  Thus  the  peculiarity  of  aesthetic 
values  is  that  they  are  detached  or  isolated  from  the  problems  of  life,  while 
values  of  the  religious  type  are  expressions  of  these  problems  in  their  most 
ultimate  form.  But,  in  any  case,  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  close 
connection  of  the  two  attitudes,  and  in  all  probability  they  are  always  inter- 
mingled. 

ELing's  theory  seems  to  afford  no  clear  differentiation  between  reli- 
gion and  morality,  or  between  religion  and  aesthetics. 

Before  leaving  King's  treatment  of  the  subject,  I  wish  to  illus- 
trate further  my  own  conception  of  religion  by  using  one  of  the 

1  The  Development  of  Religion,  p.  105. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  28. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  31 

important  instances  which  he  cites  in  support  of  his.  Referring 
to  the  dances  of  the  bushmen,  he  says: 

We  pass  from  these  activities  in  which  the  sportive  element  seems  to  pre- 
dominate to  others  of  a  more  religious  character There  was  certainly 

no  sharply  dividing  line  between  the  religious  and  the  non-religious  in  these 

cases Their  ceremonial  dances  were  specializations  from  a  perfectly 

spontaneous    manifestation    of    primitive    joyousness Among    other 

primitive  peoples  these  same  activities  came  in  many  instances  to  express  to 
their  doers  some  sort  of  ultimate  worthfulness.  That  is,  the  meaning  of  their 
lives,  as  far  as  they  were  able  to  conceive  it,  was  in  some  way  bound  up  with  the 
moon,  with  the  sun,  with  certain  natural  phenomena,  such  as  thunder  storms, 
or  with  food  itself;  and  as  a  consequence,  the  activities  which  had  gradually 
crystallized  about  these  intense  centers  of  interest,  since  they  were  literally  the 
expression  of  the  relation  of  the  people  to  the  things,  and  were  the  only  means 
by  which  they  could  think  of  that  relation — these  activities,  we  repeat,  became 
religious  ceremonials  in  the  true  sense.1 

In  this  quotation  the  two  essential  principles  which  I  suggested  in 
my  definition  are  very  suggestively  illustrated,  namely,  the  ele- 
ment of  self-consciousness,  or  feeling  of  self-worth,  and  the 
non-human  environment.  "The  meaning  of  their  lives  was 
in  some  way  bound  up  with  the  moon,"  etc.,  and  hence  "these 
activities,  since  they  were  literally  the  expression  of  the  relation 
of  the  people  to  these  things  ....  became  religious  ceremonies 
in  the  true  sense."  In  the  evolution  of  the  religious  dance,  out 
of  the  mere  overflow  of  animal  spirits  in  the  moonlight,  the  point  at 
which  religion  appears  is  the  point  at  which  moral  consciousness  or 
the  sense  of  selfhood  or  "the  meaning  of  their  lives"  emerges. 
C.  Another  conception  of  religion  which  I  wish  to  examine  is  in 
Ames's  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience.2  Professor  Ames 
thus  defines  religion:  "The  social  consciousness  in  its  most  inti- 
mate and  vital  phases  is  identical  with  religion."3  He  defends  this 
position  on  several  grounds.  First,  the  traditional  distinction 
between  morality  and  religion  was  based  upon  one  or  other  of 
several  dualisms  which  today  have  been  entirely  retired,  such  as 
that  of  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  which  science  destroys,  or 

*0p.  cit.,  pp.  in,  112. 

3  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience.    Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  1910. 

3  Op.  cit.,  p.  377. 


32  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

that  of  the  faculties  which  modern  psychology  destroys,  or  even  that 
of  the  conscious  and  the  subconscious  which  is  also  doomed.1  Dr. 
Ames  concludes :  "Without  the  definite  assumption  of  this  dualism 
the  line  between  morality  and  religion  becomes  obscure  and  tends 
to  vanish  completely."  Now  my  contention  is  that  while  the  dis- 
tinction, which  is  basic  to  my  definition,  between  the  human  and 
non-human  environment  is  not  a  substitute  for  any  of  the  dualisms 
referred  to,  it  is  a  distinction  so  natural  and  so  important  as  to  be 
worthy  of  the  prominence  I  give  it  and  is  the  real  ground  of  the 
distinction  between  religion  and  morality  to  which  tradition  has 
so  tenaciously  and  instinctively  clung. 

Dr.  Ames's  second  argument  is  that  as  we  study  morality  and 
religion  genetically  we  find  that  in  their  beginnings  there  is  no  such 
clear-cut  distinction,  and  so  we  may  conclude  that  the  distinction 
is  due  to  our  habits  of  thought  and  not  to  the  nature  of  the  case. 
"What  have  come  to  be  known  as  the  religious  observances  of 
primitive  peoples  were  concerned  with  all  the  vital  interests  of  the 

social  group It  is  difficult  and  in  fact  quite  impossible  to 

distinguish  sharply  and  finally  in  primitive  life  between  law, 
morality,  art,  and  religion."2  But  granted  that  religion  and 
morality  are  not  clearly  separate  in.  their  primitive  beginnings; 
granted  further  that  they  are  continually  interfusing  even  in  the 
mostly  highly  developed  forms;  this  is  no  more  than  may  be  said 
of  any  motives  in  human  life,  for  all  our  interests  are  inextri- 
cably interwoven.  Their  logical  differentiation,  however,  is  of 
great  practical  importance  for  purposes  of  control  and  enrichment. 
My  criticism  of  Professor  Ames's  treatment  is  that  he  fails  to  note 
that  among  the  various  ritualistic  or  ceremonial  activities  of  a 
primitive  group  which  he  classes  together  as  religious  rites  some 
are  obviously  referable  to  interests  which  lie  within  the  group  itself 
and  others  to  interests  which  involve  the  relation  of  the  group  to  its 
non-human  environment. 

As  chief  occasions  of  ceremonial  rites  Dr.  Ames  gives  the 
folio  whig:3  (i)  phenomena  in  nature,  such  as  seedtime  and  harvest, 
the  opening  of  the  fishing  and  hunting  seasons,  etc.;  (2)  birth, 

1  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience,  pp.  286,  290. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  336.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  73  ff. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  33 

initiation,  and  marriage;  (3)  death  and  burial;  (4)  war  and  treat- 
ment of  strangers.  Now  it  is  quite  true  that  the  most  obvious 
quality  which  such  varied  rites  have  in  common  is  the  emotional 
enhancement  of  common  vital  interests.  But  I  believe  they  may 
be  separated  into  two  classes  without  the  least  arbitrariness. 
For  instance,  the  celebration  of  natural  phenomena  and  that  of 
the  dangers  and  success  of  war  refer  respectively  to  the  non-human 
and  the  human  environment.  Again,  death  and  birth,  while  having 
obviously  a  social  reference,  nevertheless  are  outstanding  ex- 
amples of  the  vital  dependence  of  the  group  upon  the  forces  of 
nature,  whereas  initiation  and  marriage  embody  interests  which 
fall  almost  entirely  within  the  boundaries  of  the  group.  The 
double  reference  of  death  and  birth  does  not  discount  the  importance 
of  the  distinction  which  I  am  trying  to  emphasize.  One  and  the 
same  event  may  have  both  moral  and  religious  aspects. 

Dr.  Ames  gives  as  a  further  defense  of  the  position  that  morality 
and  religion  are  practically  identical,  the  fact  that  "religion  in 
the  minds  of  its  best  representatives  at  the  present  time  consciously 
and  frankly  accepts  as  its  highest  conception  the  ideal  of  a  king- 
dom or  brotherhood  of  moral  agents  co-operative  for  the  attain- 
ment of  further  moral  ends."1  But  compare  this  "kingdom" 
ideal  with  a  non-religious  Utopia,  such  as  socialism.  Granted 
an  equal  moral  earnestness  in  both,  why  is  the  one  consciously 
religious  and  the  other  consciously  and  avowedly  non-religious? 
The  one  believes  itself  to  be  en  rapport  with  an  extra-human 
power  with  which  it  is  co-operating.  The  other  explicitly  depends 
upon  its  own  efforts,  its  program  limits  itself  strictly  to  social 
human  forces.  The  first  is  religious  because,  while  profoundly 
moral,  it  is  fundamentally  an  adjustment  to  a  non-human  en- 
vironing power;  the  other  is  moral,  and  merely  moral,  because 
its  whole  attention  and  interest  centers  in  the  social  human 
situation.  To  be  sure,  there  are  many  indications  of  socialism 
taking  on  a  religious  quality,  but  these  very  instances  only  serve 
the  more  clearly  to  illustrate  my  thesis.  Such  religious  brands 
of  socialism  are  those  in  which  the  thinker's  horizon  broadens 
to  take  in  "nature"  or  "evolution"  or  some  other  more  or  less 

1  Op.  cit.t  p.  286. 


34  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

inclusive  non-human  prospect,  with  which  his  moral  ideals  make 
some  sort  of  adjustment.1 

Again,  from  the  results  of  Starbuck's  investigation,  Dr.  Ames 
quotes  the  fact  that  "  among  the  things  absolutely  essential,  the 
sine  qua  non  of  religion,  conduct  was  most  frequently  mentioned."2 
Here  again  the  connection  between  moral  conduct  and  religion 
should  be  obvious.  In  the  higher  phases  of  experience  "social 
attitudes, "  because  organized  and  voluntary  and  not  merely  instinc- 
tive and  accidental,  are  moral  attitudes.  The  organism  making  the 
religious  adjustment  is  a  moral  organism,  it  can  give  no  account 
of  itself  without  employing  ethical  categories.  A  religious  experi- 
ence that  has  not  conduct  or  moral  behavior  as  an  integral  part  of 
itself  is  not  from  this  standpoint  thinkable. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  logic  of  Dr.  Ames's  position  leads  to 
untenable  conclusions.  The  enthusiasm  of  a  political  campaign 
and  that  of  a  missionary  mass  meeting  may  have  very  much  in 
common,  yet  there  is  surely  some  deep  disparity.  A  torchlight 
procession  is  not  necessarily  a  religious  ceremony,  nor  is  the  final 
game  in  a  baseball  world-series,  though  it  seems  to  me  that  if  we 
adopted  Dr.  Ames's  criterion  of  the  religious  quality  we  should  be 
forced  to  consider  them  as  such.  Take  the  statement  that  "all 
moral  ideals  are  religious  in  the  degree  to  which  they  are  the 
expression  of  great  vital  interests  of  society."3  Reform  of  the 
currency  and  tariff  revision  are  great  vital  interests  of  society, 
but  no  intensity  of  discussion  can  make  these  really  religious 
problems.  The  high  cost  of  living  is  a  moral  or  economic  and  not 
a  religious  problem  today,  whereas  the  food  supply  was  among 
primitive  men  the  very  impetus  to  religion;  and  the  reason  is 
that  we  are  concerned  with  human  manipulations  of  the  food 
supply  or  with  the  sources  of  food  in  a  mechanical  or  scientific 
manner,  so  the  problem  is  partly  moral  and  partly  scientific. 
We  are  not  forced  normally  to  take  a  social  attitude  toward  the 
source  of  the  food  supply  itself,  though  a  great  famine  would 

1  For  instance,  one  cannot  but  feel  the  religious  tone  of  the  chapter  on  "The 
Good  Will"  in  H.  G.  Wells's  New  Worlds  for  Old. 
3  Op.  cit.,  p.  287. 
3  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  286. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  35 

probably  inspire  in  a  large  part  of  the  population  a  strictly  social 
attitude  toward  nature,  and  many  would  be  likely  to  pray  for  rain. 
I  believe  we  may  conclude  that  it  is  not  merely  the  greatness  of  the 
social  interests  which  are  at  stake,  but  the  attitude  which  we  take 
toward  the  non-human  environment  with  which  those  interests 
so  closely  bind  us  that  determines  the  religiousness  of  our  ideals. 
If  that  attitude  is  social,  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  social,  we  are  re- 
ligious. 

Furthermore,  if  the  "  social  consciousness  in  its  most  intimate 
and  vital  phases  is  identical  with  religion, "  would  it  not  seem  that 
an  intensely  individualistic  religious  experience  is  a  contradiction 
in  terms?  Of  course,  there  can  be  no  hard-and-fast  distinction 
between  the  individual  consciousness  and  the  social  consciousness, 
yet  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  personality  without  the  distinction. 
But  if  the  primitive  man  is  religious  in  proportion  as  his  individu- 
ality is  lost  and  swallowed  up  in  the  group  consciousness  as  it  is  in 
these  great  ceremonial  experiences,  and  if  this  is  indeed  the  logic 
of  religion,  how  can  we  possibly  account  for  the  religious  experience 
that  is  profoundly  antipathetic  to  the  dominant  group  conscious- 
ness and  is  relatively  of  an  extremely  individualistic  type  ?  Is  not 
the  religious  genius,  on  these  grounds,  an  anomaly?  "The  most 
important  feature  of  these  ceremonials,  that  which  distinguishes 
them  and  makes  them  religious,  is  the  public  and  social  character. 

....  The  social  side  is  dominant  and  controlling It 

would  be  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  all  ceremonials  in  which  the 
whole  group  operates  with  keen  emotional  interest  are  religious. "x 
To  be  sure,  it  is  a  long  way  from  the  dance  of  a  tribe  of  Australian 
blacks  to  the  meditations  of  a  highly  educated  white;  but  it  is  the 
logic  of  the  situation  we  are  concerned  with,  and  if  it  is  the  social 
emotional  quality  which  is  the  religious  differentia,  how  can  indi- 
vidualism be  religious?  But  if  the  conception  of  religion  be 
adopted  which  I  have  suggested  in  this  paper,  is  not  the  religious 
genius  logically  normal?  It  is  just  the  dominant  self  which 
emerges  in  the  social  milieu  which  is  apt,  when  confronting  the 
non-human  environment,  to  react  more  forcefully,  with  personal 
variation,  toward  it  and  so  to  initiate  changes  in  the  reactions  of 

1  Op.  tit.,  p.  72. 


36  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

the  whole  group  toward  the  non-human.  So  also  may  be  explained, 
and  indeed  defended,  the  insistence  which  the  evangelical  Protes- 
tant tradition  has  always  maintained,  that  religion  is,  in  the  last 
analysis,  a  personal  affair. 

James  in  his  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience  bases  his 
study  of  religion  not  upon  rites,  cult,  or  institutions,  but  upon  the 
subjective  or  individualistic  side  of  religious  experience;  not  upon 
the  primitive,  but  upon  the  modern  type  of  man.  He  holds 
that  "personal  religion  should  still  seem  the  primordial  thing."1 
He  draws  his  conclusions  from  a  study  of  "the  feelings,  acts,  and 
experiences  of  individual  men  in  their  solitude  so  far  as  they  appre- 
hend themselves  to  stand  in  relation  to  whatever  they  may  consider 
the  divine."2  His  conclusion  is  that  "religion  is  a  man's  total 
reaction  upon  life.  "3  And  by  total  reaction  he  means  this :  "Total 
reactions  ....  to  get  at  them  you  must  go  behind  the  foreground 
of  existence  and  reach  down  to  that  curious  sense  of  the  whole 
residual  cosmos  as  an  everlasting  presence,  intimate  or  alien,  terrible 
or  amusing,  lovable  or  odious,  which  in  some  degree  everyone 
possesses. "4  Now  to  find  the  whole  residual  cosmos,  a  "presence" 
"intimate  or  alien,"  "lovable  or  odious" — certainly  this  is  to  take 
a  social  attitude  to  the  non-human  environment.  But  within  the 
limits  of  this  definition  we  may  find  "the  light  irony  of  Voltaire  and 
Renan,  the  pessimism  of  Schopenhauer  or  Nietzsche, "  and  James 
admits  that  these  are  logically  religious,  though  there  seems  some 
incongruity  in  calling  them  such.  "For  common  men  religion 
....  signifies  always  a  serious  state  of  mind";  and  pessimists 
lack  "the  purgatorical  note  which  religious  sadness  gives  forth." 
Now  these  exceptions  are  quite  in  keeping  logically  with  the 
definition  I  have  suggested.  /Religion  is  a  vital  adjustment,  and 
the  more  successful  and  satisfactory  it  is  the  more  truly  may  it  be 
called  religious.  As  James  says,  "the  boundaries  are  always  misty 
and  it  is  everywhere  a  question  of  amount  and  degree."5  James 
feels  that  religion  must  have  warmth  and  positiveness : 

Morality  pure  and  simple  accepts  the  law  of  the  whole  which  it  finds 
reigning,  so  far  as  to  acknowledge  and  obey  it,  but  it  may  obey  it  with  the 

1  Op.  tit.,  p.  30.  s  Ibid.,  p.  35.  *  Ibid.,  p.  37. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  31.  «  Ibid.,  p.  35. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  RELIGION  37 

heaviest  and  coldest  heart  and  never  cease  to  feel  it  as  a  yoke.  But  for  religion 
in  its  strong  and  fully  developed  manifestations,  the  service  of  the  highest  is 
never  felt  as  a  yoke.  Dull  submission  is  left  far  behind  and  a  mood  of  wel- 
come ....  has  taken  its  place.1 

Here  again  I  submit  it  is  not  really  a  question  of  morality  and 
religion,  but  of  a  more  or  less  successful  and  complete  adjustment 
on  the  part  of  a  moral  organism  to  an  inescapable  non-human 
environment.  To  ''accept  the  universe  in  the  drab  discolored 
way  of  stoic  resignation  to  necessity"  is  to  indicate  that  the  self  is 
baffled  or  frustated  in  its  effort  at  adjustment.  James  admits 
that  morality  in  this  sense  and  the  more  successful  buoyant  type 
of  experience  are  "both  religious  in  the  wider  sense." 

What  of  the  value  of  the  definition  which  I  have  proposed? 
If  it  is  a  "concrete  universal, "  it  should  serve  as  a  guide  to  further 
experience.  It  should  clarify  the  conditions  of  any  real  progress. 
I  believe  that  it  simplifies  our  religious  problem  in  the  following 
ways: 

1.  It  suggests  for  the  individual  the  inevitable  necessity  of 
some  sort  of  religious  experience.     The  self  can  never  free  itself 
from  its  encompassing  cosmos.     For  the  development  of  morality 
enhances  the  vividness  of  self-consciousness,  and  the  expansion 
of  science  only  shifts,  never  annihilates,  the  "borderland  dun" 
where  "control"  merges  into  mystery. 

2.  It  reveals  the  underlying  harmony  of  effort  in  the  most 
divergent    religious    views    and   practices.     The   most   primitive 
savage  and  the  most  profound  savant  are  forced  to  attempt  one  and 
the  same  task,  namely,  an  adjustment  of  the  "self"  to  the  non- 
human  environment.     This  should  change  the  war  of  creeds  into 
a  co-operative  comparison  of  the  relative  efficiency  of  various 
instruments  wherewith  the  common  task  is  undertaken. 

3.  It    removes    the    "bottomless    subjectivity"    which    con- 
temporary psychology  appears  to  bring  into  the  religious  sphere. 
For  any  object  of  faith  is  seen  in  this  light  to  be,  not  merely  the 
"  symbol "  of  some  "  value  "  (which  "value  "  largely  evaporates  when 
once  its  symbol  is  recognized  as  mere  symbol),  but  rather  an 
instrument  whereby  an  abiding  environment  is  interpreted  or 

1  Ibid.,  p.  41. 


38  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

appropriated  or  controlled.  The  reality  of  this  environment 
abides,  and  the  necessary  task  of  adjustment  abides.  Though 
the  instrument  be  outworn,  even  though  it  be  the  greatest  of  all 
which  the  past  has  fashioned,  all  the  validity  formerly  felt  to  inhere 
in  that  instrument  still  remains  in  the  vast  and  vital  task  for  which 
that  tool  was  forged  and  in  which  it  was  so  long  and  so  well  used. 
The  conditions  of  the  task  are  greatly  changed.  The  task  in  its 
ultimate  simplicity  and  necessity  remains. 

4.  It  reveals  the  relation  between  science  and  religion.  This 
cannot  possibly  be  anything  but  some  sort  of  supplementation. 
The  social  and  the  non-social  attitudes  toward  the  non-human  are 
not  contradictory.  Physical,  mechanical  manipulation  and  con- 
trol of  the  environment  only  serve  to  enlarge  that  environment, 
and  beyond  the  scope  of  achieved  mechanical  control  forever 
reaches  the  realm  of  the  larger  organic  attitude,  the  social  attitude. 
In  science  meanings  are  abstracted  from  departments  of  experi- 
ence for  the  sake  of  more  adequate  control,  and  this  control  serves 
in  turn  to  produce  richer  meanings.  A  mechanical  interpretation  of 
Nature  is  not  an  end  in  itself.  It  is  but  a  means  of  solving  prob- 
lems, and  problems  solved  make  for  fuller  and  richer  experience. 

It  has  been  the  purpose  of  this  essay  to  indicate  the  underlying 
organic  relation  between  the  scientific  mood  and  the  religious 
mood.  It  is  not  merely  that  they  are  alternating  tempers,  both 
compelling  in  their  respective  ways.  They  are  not  merely  differ- 
ent. Why  are  they  different  ?  Why  do  they  alternate  ?  Why 
must  they  alternate?  And  what  is  gained  by  their  alternation? 
And  what  is  their  respective  value  to  the  vitality  of  the  human 
spirit?  What  are  their  relative  functions  in  the  organism  which 
they  both  serve  ?  On  such  questions  as  these  it  is  hoped  the  suc- 
ceeding chapters  may  throw  some  light. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION 

Common  sense  and  science  present  a  vast  mass  of  facts,  of 
brute  actualities.  In  the  light  of  common  day  this  world  of  our 
multifarious  experience  is  not  at  all  " divine,"  just  a  world  of  men 
and  things.  But  in  the  past  many  sensitive  souls  have  found  in 
this  everyday  world  the  tokens  of  a  divine  presence;  in  the  stirring 
struggles  for  human  rights  they  have  conceived  the  conviction 
that  "the  voice  of  the  people  is  the  voice  of  God";  in  studying 
the  stars  with  all  the  machinery  of  mathematics  and  telescopes 
they  have  had  to  exclaim  at  last,  "  O  God,  I  am  reading  thy  thoughts 
after  thee ! "  But  those  were  less  critical  days,  we  think ;  men  were 
then  less  conscious  of  the  psychology  of  their  own  emotional 
reactions;  is  it  possible  for  us  to  look  squarely  and  steadily  into 
this  world  of  fact  and  discern  in  it  God  ?  In  other  words,  for  the 
empiricist  the  question  of  the  existence  of  God  is  the  question 
whether  there  is  any  intellectually  honest  way  of  accepting  the 
emotional  reactions  of  our  whole  nature  at  anything  like  their 
face  value  if  we  find  that  the  envisaged  world  of  fact  has  some 
aspect  which,  in  some  of  our  moods,  elicits  from  deep  within  us 
the  religious  response.  For  that,  from  many  thoughtful  people,  in 
spite  of  all  the  concessions  which  must  be  made  to  the  scientific  or 
mechanistic  interpretation  of  nature,  the  world  does  irresistibly 
elicit  such  religious  response  is  unquestionably  true. 

This  is  not  the  first  time  that  men  have  faced  their  world, 
denuded  of  meanings  put  upon  it  by  religious  tradition,  and  have 
tried  to  give  an  unbiased  answer  to  the  question  of  what,  all  in  all, 
they  find  this  world  to  be.  Doubtless,  therefore,  it  would  be  a 
salutary  thing  to  review  the  outstanding  examples,  in  previous 
times,  of  the  very  same  sort  of  empirical1  investigation  which  this 

1  Empirical  is  of  course  always  a  relative  term.  Though  Descartes,  for  instance, 
was  a  "rationalist,"  he  was  empirically  minded  as  compared  with  the  Schoolmen.  By 
"empirical"  then  I  mean  the  open-minded  investigative  attitude  rather  than  the  tradi- 
tionalist. To  investigate  without  any  assumptions  is  obviously  impossible. 

39 


40  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

crucial  problem  of  religion  forces  upon  us  today.  Not  that  we 
should  be  primarily  interested  in  their  results,  so  far  as  content 
goes,  but  it  may  well  be  that  the  very  orientation  of  the  task  upon 
a  broad  and  simple  historical  background  will  save  us  useless  repeti- 
tion of  fruitless  efforts  and  perchance  point  the  direction  in  which 
the  problem  as  a  whole  seems  to  tend.  In  the  review  which  follows, 
of  the  way  in  which  this  primary  problem  of  religion  has  presented 
itself  to  the  empirical  mind,  I  shall  try  to  illustrate  rather  than 
demonstrate,  and  must  trust  that  the  statements  I  make  dogmati- 
cally may  commend  themselves  as  interpretations  which  the 
generally  accepted  facts  of  the  history  of  philosophy  will  easily 
bear.  I  do  not  claim  to  have  discovered  any  novel  facts,  but  only 
to  have  seen  the  old  facts,  after  some  little  effort  to  see  them  in  a 
broad  and  vital  way,  in  a  perspective  that  may  clothe  them  with 
a  new  interest.  If  I  can  show  a  certain  rhythm  and  a  certain 
simplicity  in  the  way  thought  has  moved  back  and  forth  upon  a 
rather  definite  pathway,  it  is  not  because  I  have  begun  with  any 
Hegelian  presuppositions,  any  assumptions  as  to  the  way  in  which 
reflection  ought  to  move.  Far  from  it.  My  sole  desire  has  been 
to  read  the  history  of  philosophy  as  one  interested  primarily  in 
the.psychology  of  the  great  movements,  not  in  their  minute  details, 
but  in  their  broad  outlines.  If  the  reader  is  suspicious  of  the 
simplicity  of  the  parallels  which  I  point  out,  I  can  only  say  that  it 
is  a  simplicity  that,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  I  have  discovered  and  not 
previously  assumed. 

To  state  the  whole  matter  very  briefly,  I  wish  to  trace  in  sharp 
and  simple  outlines  the  history  of  what  I  shall  call  the  mechanistic- 
mystical  dilemma.  And  by  mysticism,  in  this  connection,  I  mean 
a  particular  kind  of  mysticism,  what  perhaps  I  might  name  classical 
mysticism  or  nature  mysticism.  Let  me  proceed  first  of  all  to  make 
the  meaning  of  this  term  clear. 

I  have  already  defined  religion  as  a  social  attitude  toward  the 
non-human  environment.  This  definition  was  meant  to  include 
both  nature  religion  and  supra-nature  religion.  In  the  latter, 
where  the  religious  environment  is  a  more  or  less  definitely  con- 
ceived divine  society,  the  social  attitude  toward  this  environment 
is  psychologically  simple.  But  in  the  case  of  nature  religion  the 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  41 

maintenance  of  a  social  attitude  toward  the  non-human  environ- 
ment is  not  simple,  for  the  spontaneous  social  responses  of  the 
human  agent  are  continually  checked  and  in  a  way  frustrated  by 
the  fact  that  this  same  nature  appears  under  other  circumstances 
as  anything  but  a  socius.  The  emotional  social  attitudes  are 
continually  dogged  by  sophistication,  and  instinctive  or  spon- 
taneous responses  are  pushed  into  personifications  and  sublimations 
of  the  original  experience,  wherein  imaginative  thought  may  roam 
unhampered  by  continuous  reference  to  facts,  or  into  abstractions, 
in  which  reflection  seeks  some  sort  of  reconciliation  between  the 
physical  and  the  quasi-personal  complexion  which  the  world  of 
fact  seems  to  bear.  The  easier  thing  to  do,  the  popular  thing,  is 
to  allow  the  imagination  to  transfer  the  social  qualities  of  the 
world  to  some  supramundane  or  extra-natural  sphere.  This,  of 
course,  has  been  accomplished  in  a  very  complete  way  only  by  the 
great  religions,  the  gods  of  primitive  peoples  lingering  in  a  dim 
borderland  not  far  removed  from  the  actual  physical  environment. 
But  in  those  circumstances  where  a  naive  imagination  is  checked 
by  a  critical  intelligence,  the  mind  is  forced  to  maintain  toward 
nature  an  attitude  to  some  degree  social.  This  attitude  I  shall 
call  mysticism  in  the  special  sense  referred  to.  It  is,  as  I  said 
above,  continually  checked  and  modified  by  the  facts  of  unemotional 
experience,  and  thus  two  tendencies,  two  typical  interpretations 
of  the  world,  two  mutually  opposed  and  radically  inconsistent  sorts 
of  response  to  nature,  are  found  in  a  Continually  shifting  balance. 
This  is  what  I  mean  by  the  mechanistic-mystical  dilemma. 

It  is  important  that  " mysticism,"  as  used  in  this  essay,  should 
always  be  clearly  understood  as  having  the  meaning  specified  above. 
Mysticism  in  this  sense  is  particularly  characteristic  of  the  great 
reconstructive  periods  of  thought.  In  all  such  situations,  when 
the  empirically  minded  religionist  is  thrown  back  upon  the  world 
of  fact,  it  is  the  unavoidable  expression  of  the  religious  disposition. 
There  is,  of  course,  another  type  of  mysticism,  the  mysticism  of  the 
contemplative  monk,  the  mysticism  which  is  directed,  not  toward 
nature,  but  toward  the  supernatural,  toward  the  divine  beings  of  the 
"other"  world.  This  is  the  mysticism  of  Thomas  a  Kempis.  It 
is  the  mysticism  of  Christian  orthodoxy.  The  first  type,  with 


42  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

which  alone  I  shall  deal  in  this  essay,  is  the  mysticism  of  Eckhart 
and  Boehme.  Its  search  is  for  the  living  or  divine  element  in  the 
natural  world,  whereas  the  other  is  a  search  for  a  more  immediate 
experience  of  the  divine  reality  of  the  supernatural  or  "other" 
world.  While,  of  course,  the  two  types  will  tend  sometimes  to 
fuse  in  the  experience  of  individuals,  they  are  logically  distinct  and 
will  be  regarded  as  such  in  this  discussion. 

The  history  of  this  mechanistic-mystical  dilemma  may  for  the 
purpose  of  this  essay  be  divided  into  three  main  periods : 
I.  From  Thales  to  Aristotle 

II.  From  Bruno  to  Leibniz 
III.  From  Rousseau  to  Bergson 

There  are  several  outstanding  characteristics  which  these  three 
periods  have  in  common.  Each  one  is  ushered  in  by  a  period  of 
disintegration.  In  the  first  case  there  is  the  discrediting  of  Olym- 
pianism;  in  the  second,  that  of  ecclesiastical  supernaturalism;  in 
the  third,  that  of  rationalism.  Each  is  at  first  marked  by  an 
earlier  stage  of  uncritical  mysticism,  and  by  a  later  stage  of  more 
critical  mysticism,  in  which  a  special  effort  is  made  to  reconcile 
the  mechanistic  and  the  mystical  elements.  The  uncritical  mysti- 
cism of  the  first  period  is  the  hylozoism  of  the  lonians ;  of  the  second, 
the  "cosmical  poetry"  of  Bruno  and  Boehme;  of  the  third,  the 
feeling-philosophy  of  Rousseau.  The  critical  mysticism  of  the 
first  period  is  the  teleology  of  Aristotle;  of  the  second,  the  monad- 
ology  of  Leibniz;  of  the  third,  the  "creative  evolution"  of  Bergson. 
In  each  period,  urging  thought  on  toward  the  final  effort  of  critical 
mysticism,  there  are  two  phases  of  great  importance,  (i)  an  extreme 
formulation  of  the  mechanistic  tendency  and  (2)  a  characteristic 
dualism,  the  mechanistic  and  the  mystical  tendencies  threatening 
to  become  entirely  irreconcilable.  The  former  of  these,  in  the  first 
period,  is  the  atomism  of  Democritus;  in  the  second,  the  Galilean 
mechanics;  in  the  third,  the  "natural  selection"  theory  of  Darwin- 
ism. The  latter,  in  the  first  period,  is  Platonism;  in  the  second, 
Cartesianism;  in  the  third,  Kantianism. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  three  periods  are  significantly  different 
in  this,  that  whereas  the  dilemma  of  the  first  period  is  quite  objec- 
tive, in  the  second  it  is  most  characteristically  objective-subjective, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  43 

in  the  third  subjective.  In  other  words,  if  we  compare  the  uncritical 
mysticism  of  the  three  periods,  we  see  that  in  hylozoism  the  con- 
trast and  the  attempted  union  are  between  the  world-stuff  and  the 
world-life,  both  quite  objectively  conceived;  that  in  the  case  of 
Bruno  or  Boehme  the  two  elements  whose  contrast  is  emphasized 
while  their  fusion  is  attempted  are  the  macrocosm  and  microcosm, 
nature  and  man;  that  in  the  case  of  Rousseau  the  contrast-fusion 
is  between  the  inner  and  the  outer,  the  true  nature  and  the  tangible 
form  of  human  experience.  This  difference  between  the  three 
periods  is  still  more  obvious  if  we  compare  the  critical  mysticisms : 
the  contrast-fusion  of  Aristotle's  system  is  matter-form;  of  Leibniz, 
the  lower  monads  (physical)  and  the  higher  monads  (spirit,  mind) ; 
of  Bergson,  intelligence  and  intuition.  The  effort  of  each  of  these 
is,  of  course,  to  emphasize  and  explain  the  fusion,  reducing  the  con- 
trast to  the  level  of  mere  appearance,  of  superficiality.  It  is, 
however,  in  the  dualisms  of  the  three  periods  that  this  point  is 
most  clearly  to  be  seen,  the  point,  namely,  that  the  dilemma  is  in 
the  first  objective,  in  the  second  objective-subjective,  in  the  third 
subjective.  In  Plato  the  gulf  yawns  between  concrete  thing  or 
act  and  eternal  type;  in  Descartes,  between  res  extensa  and  res 
cogitans;  in  Kant,  between  pure  reason  and  practical  reason.  The 
importance  of  this  sequence,  objective,  objective-subjective, 
subjective,  I  shall  refer  to  later  in  my  discussion. 

i.    THE  FIRST  PERIOD:   FROM  THALES  TO  ARISTOTLE 

i.  From  Olympianism  to  hylozoism. — I  have  suggested  above 
the  psychological  principle  which  goes  farthest  to  explain  the 
rise  of  hylozoistic  philosophy  in  Ionia.  The  historical  facts 
which  brought  this  principle  into  action  were,  very  briefly,  these: 
(a)  The  Olympian  religion  had,  because  of  general  prosperity 
and  changed  conditions  of  life,  got  out  of  touch  with  practical 
interests.  Originally  nature  deities,  the  gods  had,  through  a  long, 
imaginative  process,  been  elevated  to  the  remote  grandeur  of 
Olympus.  Furthermore,  the  ethical  conceptions  of  the  thoughtful 
had  radically  outgrown  the  moral  standards  imbedded  in  the 
Olympian  theology.  Olympianism  had  simply  become  irrelevant  to 
practical  life,  (b)  All  the  stimulations  of  intellectual  curiosity  and 


44  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

of  a  practical  interest  in  the  processes  of  nature  which  influenced  the 
lonians  of  the  sixth  century,  such  as  the  contact  with  other  civiliza- 
tions and  the  many  novel  experiences  of  the  colonists,  drove  thought 
back  upon  the  world  of  fact,  a  world  denuded  by  the  development 
and  the  resultant  irrelevance  of  Olympianism  of  its  original 
(animistic)  religious  significance. 

The  result,  psychologically,  was  inevitable.  Many  aspects  of 
this  world,  now  contemplated  with  some  considerable  degree  of 
religiously  unprejudiced  curiosity,  immediately  elicited  an  inter- 
pretation of  the  social  type.  "All  things,"  said  Thales,  "are  full 
of  gods,"  by  which  he  meant  that  the  world  of  the  senses  was  some- 
how "divine,"  in  some  sense  alive,  however  dead  the  gods  of 
Olympus  might  be.  And  the  mysterious  power  of  the  magnet 
was  a  suggestive  illustration.1  Many  other  aspects  of  the  world, 
however,  elicited,  as  in  all  everyday  life,  only  the  non-social,  the 
mechanical,  adjustments,  the  physical  interpretation.  And  the 
Ionian  thinker  tried  to  conceive  this  world,  physical  yet  somehow 
alive,  in  terms  adequate  to  both  aspects  at  once,  without  recourse 
to  mythology.  This  mechanistic-mystical  attitude  is  hylozoism. 

2.  The  dualistic  tendency  of  the  dilemma. — But  in  hylozoism 
the  strain  upon  the  hyphen  is  great.  Greek  speculation  at  once, 
quite  unconsciously,  broke  the  problem  up  into  that  of  the  world- 
stuff  and  that  of  the  world-process.  Later,  when  metaphysics 
grew  up  afresh  out  of  the  soil  of  ethics,  the  dualism  was  first 
practical,  the  Socratic  contrast  between  action  and  goal;  then 
later  the  logical  distinction  between  particular  and  universal;  then 
finally  the  metaphysical  distinction  between  concrete-temporal  and 
the  ideal-eternal,  the  content  and  the  form,  the  material  and  the 
immaterial.  Even  as  the  social  dispositions  of  primitive  men  had 
instinctively  separated  a  living  something  from  out  the  matrix  of 
common  experience,  the  living  something  expressed  in  "manaism" 
or  what  not,  only  that  finally  it  should  be  domiciled  as  the  gods 
upon  Olympus;  so  again  the  social  disposition  of  the  Athenian 
intellectual  separated  out  the  moral  goal  from  the  matrix  of  every- 

1  The  reader  can  easily  get  at  the  psychology  of  the  hylozoists  by  playing  for  a 
few  minutes  with  a  good  strong  magnet,  allowing  himself  to  feel  vividly  the  kinaesthetic 
sensations  as  the  magnet  pulls  upon  the  bit  of  steel  held  between  the  fingers,  and  by 
giving  just  a  little  rein  to  the  imagination. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  45 

day  actions,  only  to  see  it  finally,  via  logic  and  metaphysics, 
settled  as  the  Idea  of  the  Good,  in  the  heaven  beyond  the  heavens, 
while  the  earth  and  the  things  that  are  earthy  " participate," 
inexplicably  enough,  in  the  reality  of  which  they  are  but  shadows ! 

3.  The  mechanistic  tendency. — The  non-mystical  temperament 
of  the  Greeks  set  the  pace  for  all  generations.  A  brief  and  simple 
outline  of  the  conceptions  which  they  formulated,  in  the  attempt 
to  understand  the  world  of  fact,  will  perhaps  prove  suggestive. 

The  greatest  progress  toward  simplifying  and  so  understanding 
nature  was  achieved,  through  many  modifications,  by  the  treat- 
ment of  substance,  (a)  The  beginning  was  made  by  Milesianism, 
the  quest  for  the  one  stuff  of  which  the  many  things  are  formed.  In 
Thales  and  Anaximenes  this  is  an  empirical  substance.  In  Anaxi- 
mander  it  is  conceived  of  as  a  transempirical  substance,  (b)  The 
problem  of  substance  soon  is  seen  to  be  the  problem  of  qualities. 
The  riot  of  changing  and  mingling  qualities  is  vastly  simplified 
when  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras  conceive  of  qualitatively  distinct 
and  changeless  elements,  whose  mixture  produces  our  sensuous 
world,  (c)  The  greatest  step  was  that  of  atomism,  whereby  qualita- 
tive differences  are  understood  in  terms  of  quantitative  differences. 
There  are  no  real  changes  in  the  elements.  There  are  no  qualita- 
tive differences,  save  those  of  size  and  shape.  Combination,  due 
to  whirling  motions  and  resultant  vortices,  accounts  for  all  objects 
and  events,  while  effluxes,  due  also  to  the  motions,  account  for 
sense-impressions  and  thoughts.  This  is  the  acme  of  the  Greek 
mechanization  of  nature. 

The  treatment  of  the  world-process  was  more  difficult.  After 
the  first  great  step  is  made  of  conceiving  all  changes  as  merely  parts 
of  a  world-change,  three  questions  concerning  this  all-inclusive  pro- 
cess inevitably  present  themselves,  namely,  What  ?  Why  ?  How  ? 

To  the  first  question  there  are  several  answers: 

a)  Anaximander:  Separation  of  opposites. 

b)  Anaximenes:  Condensation  and  rarefaction. 

c)  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras :  Mixing  of  qualitatively  simple 
elements. 

d}  Democritus:  Mere  motion  of  non-qualitative  elements. 
Thus  far  the  net  result  of  the  simplifying  efforts  is  twofold:  the 


46  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

world  is  basically  merely  quantitative;  all  change  is  basically 
motion. 

To  the  second  question,  Why?  a  mechanistic  answer  seems 
impossible.  It  is  a  distinctly  anthropopathic  question.  And  so 
we  find  such  conceptions  as  the  generalization  of  Anaximander 
that  the  world-process  is  injustice  requiring  compensatory  reaction, 
and  that  of  Heraclitus  that  the  world-strife  is  justice.  But  the 
thoroughgoing  mechanist  will  attempt  to  make  the  question  Why  ? 
meaningless  when  asked  concerning  the  nature-process,  by  showing 
its  meaninglessness  when  asked  concerning  human  actions.  De- 
mocritus'  psychology  is  a  theory  of  atoms-in-motion.  But  if  the 
atomistic  mind  still  persists  in  asking  Why  ?  concerning  the  vortices 
of  which  it  is  itself  but  a  sample,  the  answer  is  Necessity,  mathe- 
matical necessity. 

How?  is,  as  it  were,  midway  between  What?  and  Why?  It 
seeks  a  more  inward  interpretation  than  What  ?  It  is  less  anthro- 
popathic than  Why?  It  is  the  question  which  becomes  crucial 
only  when,  after  the  problem  of  substance  and  the  problem  of 
process  have  each  received  definitive  answers,  the  problem  of  the 
relation  between  substance  and  process  becomes  dominant. 

It  should  be  noted  that  while  Democritus  in  Abdera  was  con- 
tent to  discuss  the  What  ?  of  the  world-substance  and  world-process, 
events  in  Athens  had  produced  a  shift  of  the  philosophic  center  of 
gravity,  and  Socrates  had  initiated  the  search  for  the  norm  of 
action  and  of  ethical  judgment.  As  a  result  the  whole  metaphysical 
horizon  is  tinged  with  the  problem  of  the  normative;  the  substance- 
process  enigma  passes  through  the  alembic  of  ethical  experience 
and  comes  out  as  the  content-form  enigma.  (The  means  by  which 
the  ethical  problem  is  transformed  into  a  metaphysical  problem  is 
the  logical  discussion  of  the  relation  between  the  particular  and  the 
universal.)  Thus  the  How?  of  the  world-process  is  a  profounder 
question  than  the  What  ?  or  the  Why  ?  inasmuch  as  the  motive  of 
the  scientific  development  from  Thales  to  Democritus  is  now 
imbued  with  the  moral  earnestness  engendered  in  Socrates  and 
Plato  by  the  tragic  social  situation  in  Athenian  life.  It  is  deeper, 
also,  because  of  the  influence  of  mathematical  insight,  and  because 
of  the  new  rigor  imposed  upon  thought  by  the  development  of  logic. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  47 

This  greater  profundity  may  be  most  clearly  seen  by  noting  a 
relation  which,  though  perhaps  not  due  to  a  direct  connection,  is 
yet  actually  existent  between  the  Platonic-Aristotelian  statement 
of  the  world-problem  and  the  Democritean  solution.  Democritus 
succeeded  in  stripping  the  elemental  substance,  the  atom,  of  all 
qualities  save  form.  For  Aristotle  the  substance  and  the  form  are 
separable  in  thought.  Indeed  there  seemed  no  way  of  allowing  form 
to  adhere  inseparably  to  substance  without  being  driven  to  atom- 
istic materialism.  So  much  at  least  the  preceding  three  centuries 
had  demonstrated.  On  the  other  hand,  if  separable,  how  could 
form  and  substance  be  conceived  of  as  being  actually  related? 
Plato's  failure  to  answer  this  question  is  notorious.  The  doctrine 
of  participation  was  not  satisfactory,  'The  situation  is  relieved 
by  recourse  to  mythology.  The  notion  of  the  demiurge  and  of  the 
world-soul  is  anthropopathism  revived.  If  for  Plato  the  world 
was  "fundamentally  mathematical,"  it  was  nevertheless  ultimately 
not  intelligible  as  such.  Without  the  demiurge  and  the  world-soul 
the  mathematical  world  cannot  be  understood.  Thus  Plato  was 
"in  some  things  a  reactionary."1  Only,  according  to  the  thesis 
of  this  paper,  being  "reactionary"  was  simply  being  a  mystic. 
Mechanism  reacts  inevitably  against  mysticism,  and  mysticism 
reacts  as  inevitably  against  mechanism.  The  lion  and  the  lamb 
do  not  for  long  lie  down  together. 

This,  then,  is  the  How-problem  of  the  world-process  in  the  pecul- 
iarly difficult  form  in  which  it  presented  itself  to  Aristotle.  How 
does  matter  take  on  form  ?  How  does  the  essence  realize  itself  in 
the  concrete  particular  reality  ?  The  doctrine  of  development  is 
Aristotle's  answer  to  the  What-problem.  But  within  this  notion 
there  lurks  the  subtler  question  of  how  the  development  takes  place. 

4.  Critical  mysticism. — The  teleology  which  Plato  had  suggested 
in  figurative  or  mythical  form  Aristotle  embodied  in  his  doctrine 
of  entelechy,  the  thought  that  cosmic  processes  are  the  realization 
of  the  essence  in  the  phenomenon.  The  cue  for  this  system  was 
the  development  of  growing  organisms  and  the  constructive  activ- 
ities of  man.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  the  teleology  of  growth 
and  that  of  artistic  construction  are  not  at  all  the  same,  and  since 

1  Marvin,  History  of  European  Philosophy,  p.  147. 


48  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

these  two  applications  of  the  teleological  principle  run  through  the 
whole  system  sometimes  quite  confused,  we  have  here,  in  the  use 
of  the  latter  at  least,  a  further  illustration  of  my  thesis  that  the 
Greek  mind  was  continually  forced  back  upon  anthropopathic  or 
social  conceptions  to  eke  out  its  otherwise  abstract  and  mechanical 
interpretations  of  reality.  Although  it  is  true  that  the  application 
of  this  artistic  principle  is  mostly  by  way  of  analogy,  nevertheless 
it  is  just  this  inability  of  the  greatest  mind  of  the  ancient  period 
to  dispense  entirely  with  the  personal  or  quasi-personal  feeling  in 
his  explanation  of  cosmic  processes  that  is  so  significant. 

It  is  illuminating  to  note  the  several  ways  in  which  Aristotle 
seeks  on  the  one  hand  to  save  his  teleology  from  becoming  a  merely 
anthropopathic  teleology,  and  on  the  other  to  preserve  any  real  sig- 
nificance for  the  human  comprehension  of  it.  In  the  first  place, 
vitalistic  finalism  and  artistic  finalism  offset  each  other,  the  former 
getting  its  actual  intelligibility  by  means  of  the  artistic  or  con- 
structive analogy,  the  latter  being  corrected  in  its  inherent 
anthropopathic  tendency  by  constant  reference  to  the  biological 
process.  In  the  second  place,  the  artistic  finalism  is  broken  up 
into  four  elements,  namely,  material  cause,  efficient  cause,  formal 
cause,  and  final  cause.  The  last  of  these  is  shown  to  be  the  most 
important.  Formal  cause  and  efficient  cause  would  inevitably 
tend  toward  anthropopathism,  if  indeed  not  toward  anthropo- 
morphism. Hence  this  danger  is  averted  by  stressing  final  cause. 
Again,  the  artistic  analogy  is  rendered  innocuous  by  the  entelechial 
psychology,  wherein,  even  as  vegetative  soul  and  animal  soul  are 
progressively  aufgehoben  in  the  rational  soul,  so  the  rational 
soul,  which  would  be  responsible  for  the  existence  of  final  cause 
(in  the  artistic  analogy),  is  in  turn  aufgehoben  by  the  cosmic  pro- 
gression toward  pure  form.  And  then,  in  the  fourth  place,  by  the 
subtle  correlation  of  form  and  matter,  the  one  being  drawn  on  by 
the  attraction  of  form,  the  other  being  effectively  attractive  only 
because  of  the  longing  of  matter  for  form,  by  this  subtle  correlation 
the  pure  passivity  of  the  perfection  of  God  is  yet  dynamic,  while 
the  "longing"  of  matter  is  yet  not  a  merely  hylozoistic  longing. 

Thus  does  the  subtle  anthropoteleism  of  the  culminating  system 
of  antiquity  save  itself  from  a  cruder  anthropopathism.  But 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  49 

thus,  also,  does  the  mystical  motif  vindicate  itself  as  an  inevitable 
supplementation  of  the  mechanistic  motif.  From  first  to  last  the 
systems  of  antiquity  illustrate  this  point  that  the  mechanical 
and  mystical  interpretations  of  the  world  are  complementary  and 
at  the  same  time  mutually  contradictory.  Each  tends  to  force  the 
other  from  the  field,  yet  each  in  itself  is  inadequate.  The  various 
conceptions  which  seek  to  combine  the  two  are  always  in  unstable 
equilibrium.  They  tend  to  break  down  either  in  one  direction  or 
in  the  other. 

II.      THE   SECOND  PERIOD:     FROM  BRUNO  TO  LEIBNIZ 

i.  From  ecclesiastical  supernaturalism  to  Bruno1  s  philosophy. — 
It  should  be  obvious  that  when  the  metaphysical  dualism,  begin- 
ning in  the  system  of  Plato,  culminated  in  the  system  of  Chris- 
tianity, by  which  reality  falls  apart  into  two  utterly  distinct  spheres, 
the  temporal  and  the  eternal,  the  sensuous  and  the  supramundane, 
thought  should  find  much  less  difficulty  in  apprehending  it  in  the 
opposed  categories  of  the  mechanical  and  mystical  attitudes.  The 
problem  is  not  now  that  of  interpreting  a  world  that  seems  inade- 
quately explained  by  either  mechanical  or  mystical  concepts  exclu- 
sively, but  of  explaining  the  possibility  and  method  of  contact 
between  the  two  worlds  which  are  regarded  as  metaphysically 
distinct.  For  the  practical  needs  of  Christianity  this  problem  is 
readily  enough  solved  by  the  conception  of  revelation  and  miracle, 
and  in  an  age  that  was  hard  pressed  by  practical  religious  and  moral 
rather  than  philosophical  needs  the  mystical  attitude  attached 
itself  inevitably  to  the  supramundane,  divine  world  and  the 
mechanical  to  the  earthly,  temporal  world.  Consequently  the 
patristic  and  mediaeval  periods  are  comparatively  poor  in  illustra- 
tions of  the  thesis  I  am  advancing.  But  when  once  the  movement 
which  began  with  Duns  Scotus  at  the  culmination  of  mediaeval 
thought,  namely,  the  separation  of  philosophy  from  theology, 
reached  its  consummation,  and  the  thinker  was  free  to  look  again 
with  untrammeled  curiosity  at  the  world  about  him  and  to  seek 
expressions  for  the  responses  that  it  evoked  within  him,  this 
antagonism  and  necessary  mutual  supplementation  of  mechanical 
and  mystical  interpretations  which  I  have  noted  in  the  Greek 
period  become  again  remarkably  apparent. 


30  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

The  psychology  of  this  return  to  the  world  of  fact  from  a  pre- 
occupation with  a  world  of  faith  is  hardly  less  simple  than  that  of 
the  lonians.  The  growing  irrelevance  of  the  established  view  of 
life,  a  quickening  of  the  intellect  by  great  discoveries,  the  discovery 
of  classical  culture,  of  a  wide,  wide  world,  of  a  solar  system — all 
this  is  a  familiar  story.  And  thrown  back  upon  this  world  of  fact, 
aided  by  the  recently  discovered  neo-Platonic  and  neo-Pythagorean 
philosophies,  Bruno  and  Boehihe  at  once  reacted  mystically  to  this 
great  world  of  fact.  The  transcendency  of  God  is  not  so  much 
denied  as  ignored.  It  is  the  immanence  of  God  with  which  the  nat- 
ural philosophy  of  the  Renaissance  is  concerned.  The  essence 
of  God  and  that  of  the  world  are  identified.  He  is  the  "  inex- 
haustible infinite  world-force;  the  natura  naturans  which  in  eternal 
change  forms  and  ' unfolds'  itself  purposefully  and  in  conformity 
with  law  into  the  natura  naturata."1  While  the  cosmology  of 
Bruno  bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  that  of  Democritus  and 
Epicurus,  "a  system  of  countless  worlds,  each  of  which  .  .  .  . 
grows  from  chaotic  conditions  to  clear  and  definite  formation  and 
again  yields  to  the  destiny  of  dissolution,"  yet  Bruno  "  regarded 
the  plurality  of  solar  systems  not  as  a  mechanical  juxtaposition, 
but  as  an  organic  living  whole,  and  regarded  the  process  of  the 
growth  and  decay  of  worlds  as  maintained  by  the  pulse-beat  of  the 
one  divine  all-life"2 

2.  The  dualistic  tendency. — It  is  obvious  enough  that  in  Bruno's 
natura  naturans  jand  natura  naturata  the  passive  and  active  parti- 
ciples indicate  a  counterpart  of  the  two  aspects  of  the  hylozoism 
of  the  lonians.  But  the  dilemma  is  now  not  so  characteristically 
objective  as  it  is  objective-subjective.  'This  is  suggested  by 
the  importance  of  the  conception  of  macrocosm  and  microcosm, 
which  played  so  important  a  part  in  the  philosophy  of  the  Renais- 
sance, and  makes  self-realization  the  key  to  the  riddles  of  the 
universe.  The  self-consciousness  of  this  period  is  one  thing  that 
makes  it  profoundly  different  from  the  classic  period. 

This  aspect  of  the  situation  becomes  clearly  dominant  in  the 
work  of  Descartes,  whose  cogito  is  the  starting-point  of  his  philos- 
ophy, and  whose  division  of  reality  into  res  cogitans  and  res  extensa 

1  Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  367.  3  Italics  are  mine. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  51 

is  the  subjective-objective  counterpart  of  the  substance-process, 
or  matter-form,  dualism  of  the  Greeks.  (The  latter  produced  a 
brood  of  ontological  perplexities  and  puzzles,  taxing  to  the  limit 
the  brain  of  an  Aristotle;  the  former  has  produced  a  still  greater 
horde  of  puzzles,  the  problems  and  perplexities  of  epistemology. 
No  doubt  men  will  at  last  learn  that  the  only  way  to  answer  the 
problems  created  by  a  dualism,  whether  ontological  or  epistemo- 
logical,  is  to  find  the  origin  of  the  dualism  and  understand  the 
conditions  which  produced  it.  Otherwise  we  are  treating  symptoms 
and  not  causes.) 

In  a  word,  the  significance  of  Descartes'  res  cogitans  for  our 
present  discussion  is  simply  this:  It  provided  an  asylum  for  all 
those  emotional  and  quasi-ethical  values  which  the  new  science 
had  just  banished  from  the  'objective  world.  Mechanics  had 
reduced  the  world  to  a  mechanism,  robbed  of  those  vague  quasi- 
personal  qualities  which  it  has  always  had  except  when,  as  I  have 
said,  they  had  been  banished,  by  Olympianism,  Platonism,  or 
Christianity,  to  some  "other"  world.  Cartesianism  finds  also 
an  " other"  world  for  them,  but  it  is  now  not  a  supramundane 
world,  but  the  world  of  man's  inner  experience,  his  subjective 
being.  So  it  is  that  Descartes'  dualism  seems  at  first  to  afford 
relief  from  the  mechanizing  of  the  objective  world. 

3.  The  mechanistic  development. — 

a)  In  the  objective  sphere:  Probably  the  most  stimulating 
thing  in  nature  is  movement.  The  evolution  of  humanity  has, 
physiologically  considered,  depended  predominantly  upon  the 
development  of  the  distant  receptors,  ears  and  eyes,  especially 
eyes,  whose  function  it  is,  in  large  part,  to  notify  the  organism  of 
movement  in  its  environment.  Even  in  civilized  man  the  vague 
perception  of  something  moving,  caught  by  the  tail  of  the  eye, 
often  can  stir  the  whole  organism  more  violently  than  the  most 
gorgeous  panorama  of  motionless  landscape  or  the  most  splendid 
prospect  of  massed  stone  and  brick.  An  unexpected  movement  in 
some  supposedly  inanimate  object  can,  in  spite  of  us,  banish, 
momentarily  at  least,  our  deepest  sophistication.  The  human  or- 
g^nism  can  soon  make  itself  master  of  motionless  objects.  Move- 
ment is  the  incalculable  element  of  our  experience,  in  response  to 


52  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

which  our  instinctive  and  emotional  nature  is  always  ready  to 
assert  itself.  It  was,  then,  to  put  it  mildly,  an  epoch-making  event 
when  man  learned  to  apply  the  laws  of  the  motionless  to  motion. 
That  was,  in  a  word,  the  inestimable  feat  of  Galileo.  He  "  created 
mechanics  as  the  mathematical  theory  of  motion."  This  achieve- 
ment was  pregnant  with  incalculable  changes  in  man's  attitude 
toward  the  forces  of  the  world.  Arithmetic  and  geometry  had 
been  long  in  preparation,  but  had  been  applicable,  in  any  successful 
way,  only  to  motionless  objects,  as  motionless.  When  Kepler 
established  the  principle  that  all  changes  in  the  universe  are  to  be 
considered  primarily  as  motion,  and  Galileo  immediately  found 
how  to  apply  to  motion  the  principles  of  the  motionless,  the  founda- 
tion was  laid  for  that  wonderful  development  known  as  modern 
science,  the  secret  of  which  is,  so  far  as  our  present  discussion  is 
concerned,  the  substitution  of  effective,  non-emotional,  mechanistic, 
purely  intellectual  conceptions  and  manipulations  of  natural  objects 
and  forces,  for  the  spontaneous  but  ineffective,  emotional,  instinc- 
tive, anthropopathic  attitudes. 

b)  In  the  subjective  sphere:  The  inspiring  success  of  the  new 
mechanics  and  the  need  of  a  more  exact  science  of  social  experience 
made  it  inevitable  that  the  application  of  the  same  mechanical 
method  should  be  attempted  with  reference  to  the  subjective  realm. 
Hobbes  is  the  great  innovator  in  this  departure;  if  emotion  is 
simply  a  kind  of  motion,  a  mechanics  of  morality  would  seem 
feasible  enough.  Locke's  sensationalism,  the  " association"  psy- 
chology and  the  whole  rationalistic  development  in  its  application 
to  mental  and  spiritual  experience,  is  the  result  of  this  ambition 
to  work  out  a  mechanics  of  inner  experience. 

4.  Critical  mysticism. — The  significance  of  Leibniz  in  this 
period  is  similar  to  that  of  Aristotle  in  the  first.  To  the  intellect 
a  dualism  between  res  extensa  and  res  cogitans  is  as  unsatisfactory 
as  that  between  matter  and  form;  and  to  the  spiritual  interests  of 
man  an  extreme  and  unmodified  mechanistic  view  of  life,  whether 
objective  or  subjective,  is  even  more  unacceptable.  The  chief 
motive  in  the  work  of  Leibniz  was  the  desire  to  reduce  this  dualism 
and  to  restore  the  meaning,  the  purposefulness,  of  the  world,  which 
mechanism  seemed  to  have  destroyed. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  53 

The  reconciliation  of  the  mechanical  and  teleological  views  of  the  world 
....  was  the  leading  motive  in  the  thought  of  Leibniz.  He  wished  to  get 
the  mechanical  explanation  of  nature  ....  carried  through  to  its  fullest 
extent,  and  at  the  same  time  he  cast  about  for  thoughts  by  the  aid  of  which 
the  purposeful  living  character  of  the  universe  might  nevertheless  remain 
comprehensible.  The  attempt  must  therefore  be  made  ....  to  see  whether 
the  whole  mechanical  course  of  events  could  not  be  ultimately  traced  back  to 
efficient  causes,  whose  purposeful  nature  should  afford  an  import  and  meaning 
to  their  working  taken  as  a  whole.  The  ultimate  goal  of  this  philosophy  is 
to  understand  the  mechanism  of  the  cosmic  processes  as  the  means  and  phenom- 
enal form  by  which  the  living  content  or  import  of  the  world  realizes  itself.1 

How  then  does  Leibniz  reconcile  mechanism  and  mysticism? 
In  other  words,  how,  in  the  first  place,  does  he  modify  mechanism 
so  as  to  relieve  it  of  its  cold  and  cheerless  purposelessness,  and  how, 
in  the  second  place,  does  he  guard  mysticism  against  its  inherent 
tendency  toward  crude  anthropopathism  ?  Space  forbids  anything 
more  than  a  compact  and  dogmatic  statement. 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  recall  the  net  result  of  the  achievements 
in  the  mechanistic  tendency  up  to  this  time.  Democritus  had 
completed  the  Greek  mechanization  of  substance  by  reducing  all 
qualitative  differences  to  purely  quantitative  differences,  as  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  atom,  and  had  also  reduced  all  changes  to  motion. 
But  motion  remains  as  an  unexplained  datum,  inseparably  con- 
nected with  substance,  for  the  atoms  are  eternally  in  motion.  In 
the  second  period  the  Galilean  mechanics  has  logically  eliminated 
motion  (the  path  of  a  cannon  ball,  for  instance,  being  definable 
in  a  mathematical  formula,  consisting  of  "variables,"  which 
variables,  when  assigned  any  particular  values,  give,  as  their  actual 
meaning,  a  point,  a  motionless  point,  in  two-  or  three-dimensional 
space);  so  that,  in  the  objective  sphere,  Descartes  finds  only  res 
extensa,  or  substance  whose  nature  is  extension.  Now  Leibniz 
meets  this  entire  situation  by  a  startling  innovation,  which  has 
linked  his  fame  with  modern  physical  theory.  This  innovation 
is  the  denial  that  the  ultimate  nature  of  substance  is  extension, 
and  the  affirmation  that  it  is  force.  There  is  nothing,  he  claims, 
in  extension  which  can  explain  force  or  motion,  but  force  can  explain 
both  extension  and  motion.  The  method  by  which  he  arrived  at 

1  Windelband,  op.  cit.,  p.  421. 


54  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

this  conclusion  was  in  part  an  examination  of  the  problem  of 
inertia,1  and  in  part  (and  this  is  no  less  significant,  as  recalling  the 
subjective-objective  point  of  view  of  this  whole  humanistic  period) 
by  an  analysis  of  the  logical  judgment,  the  discovery  that  a  true 
substance  is  "that  which  is  the  subject  of  all  the  various  predicates, 
but  is  itself  the  predicate  of  no  subject,"  and  the  assumption  that 
the  self  is  the  only  subject  which  meets  this  condition,  and  is  there- 
fore the  type  of  true  substance.  "The  essential  feature  of  sub- 
stance, as  represented  by  the  Ego,  is  its  self-originating  and 
self-determining  nature.  This  dynamical  quality  ....  [is]  an 
entelechy  ....  'a  sufficiency  which  makes  it  the  source  of  its 
internal  activities.'"2  This  force,  further,  which  is  the  ultimate 
nature  of  all  substance,  of  every  "monad,"  is  appetition,  a  striving 
to  fulfil  its  own  potency  by  a  progressively  clear  representation  of 
the  nature  of  the  whole  universe. 

On  the  surface  this  would  seem  to  be  mysticism  with  a  ven- 
geance. The  whole  previous  development  seems  quite  reversed,  for 
whereas  Democritus,  Galileo,  and  Descartes  have  reduced  all 
objective  reality  to  extension,  Leibniz  pushes  it  all  onto  the  other 
horn  of  the  dilemma,  and  reduces  everything,  bodies  and  motions 
alike,  to  appetition,  which  confessedly  is  akin,  at  least  in  its  higher 
manifestations,  to  desire.  How  then  does  he  safeguard  his  mys- 
ticism from  becoming  a  sort  of  animistic  atomism  ? 

There  are  three  factors  in  this  part  of  his  task:  In  the  first 
place,  all  change  is  restricted  to  an  inherent  development  within 
each  monad,  for  it  is  explicitly  denied  that  the  monads  influence 
each  other.  They  "have  no  windows."  What  is  implicit  simply 
becomes  explicit.  What  is  potential  becomes  actual.  Thus  real 
change  is,  so  to  speak,  denatured.  In  the  second  place,  there  is  a 
pervasive  equivocation  in  the  use  of  the  term  "representation." 
The  fallacy  of  figure  of  speech  could  be  traced  in  the  suggestions 
of  the  phrase,  "a  living  mirror  of  the  universe."3  Representing 
means  sometimes  symbolizing,  sometimes  perceiving,  a  curious 
fusion  of  the  mathematical  and  the  psychological.  An  algebraic 

XC£.  Windelband,  op.  cit.,  p.  421. 

3  See  Hibben,  The  Philosophy  of  the  Enlightenment,  pp.  168,  169. 

3  Italics  mine.     See  Monadology,  sees.  56,  83. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  55 

equation  represents  a  circle;  the  conscious  purpose  of  the  supreme 
monad  represents  the  whole  cosmic  process.  The  concepts  of  the 
mathematician's  consciousness  and  the  mathematical  truth  of  his 
consciousness  are  melted  into  an  equivocal  notion  pregnant  with 
a  superficial  success  for  the  solution  of  the  dilemma  under  discus- 
sion.1 In  the  third  place,  the  doctrine  of  "  pre-established  har- 
mony "  emerges  from  this  mathematical  type  of  representation.  If 
4X2 4- 93^  =  36  represents  an  ellipse  and  4^  —  9^  =  36  represents  a 
hyperbola,  the  change  from  plus  to  minus  sign  does  not  cause  the 
change  from  ellipse  to  hyperbola;  the  two  changes  simply  reveal 
an  inherent  and  necessary  co-ordination.  In  some  such  sense  is 
there  a  " pre-established  harmony"  between  thoughts  of  the  soul 
and  movements  of  the  body,  between  the  divine  purpose  and  the 
events  of  history,  between  the  "windowless"  development  of 
every  monad  and  that  of  every  other.2  Thus  real  cause,  in  the 
dynamic  sense,  is,  in  large  part,  supplanted  by  cause  in  the  mathe- 
matical sense,  a  "  function  of  variables."  In  short,  the  mechanistic 
world  of  res  extensa  is  replaced  by  a  mystical  world  of  force-monads. 
But  this  dynamic  reality  is  rendered  static,  its  harmony  is  pre- 
established,  its  "appetition"  is  congealed  into  formal  logic.  To 
be  sure,  in  the  last  resort,  the  whole  scheme  resolves  itself  into  and 
solves  itself  by  an  appeal  to  theology.  But  so  did  Plato  fall  back 
on  mythology,  making  "participation"  intelligible  by  invoking 
the  "  demiurge" — the  philosophical  deus  ex  machinal 

To  a  friend  Leibniz  writes:  "I  flatter  myself  that  I  have  dis- 
covered the  harmony  of  the  different  systems,  and  have  seen  that 
both  sides  are  right,  provided  they  do  not  clash  with  one  another; 
that  in  the  phenomena  of  nature  everything  happens  mechanically, 
and  at  the  same  time  metaphysically."3  " Provided  they  do  not 
clash  with  one  another!"  What  a  petitio  principal  This  age-old 
puzzle  is  not  solved  by  a  little  mathematics,  and  the  philosopher  is 
doomed  to  tread  many  more  weary  rounds.  From  Aristotle  to 
Leibniz,  from  Leibniz  to  Bergson,  the  problem  passes.  But  in 

1  Compare  Windelband's  statement  in  another  connection,  "Leibniz  is  here  served 
a  very  good  turn  by  the  ambiguity  in  the  word  'representation,'  "  op.  cit.,  p.  422,  n.  6. 
3  Compare  Hibben,  op.  cit.,  pp.  179  ff. 
3  Schriften,  II,  607.     Quoted  by  Hibben,  op.  cit.,  p.  185. 


56  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

the  meantime  Kant  has,  by  his  "Copernican  revolution,"  enabled 
men  to  envisage  the  whole  situation  in  an  entirely  new  way. 
Perhaps  in  this  third  period  we  shall  come  nearer  to  the  heart  of  the 
trouble  in  this  mechanistic-mystical  dilemma. 

III.   THE  THIRD  PERIOD:  FROM  ROUSSEAU  TO  BERGSON 

i.  The  reaction  from  rationalism:  Rousseau' 's  philosophy  of 
feeling. — As  the  Greeks  had  reacted  from  Olympianism  and  dis- 
covered a  hylozoistic  world,  the  Renaissance  had  reacted  from 
supernaturalism  and  discovered  a  self-and-nature  reality,  a 
humanistic-naturalistic  world.  But,  as  before,  the  strain  upon 
the  hyphen  steadily  increased.  The  microcosm  and  macrocosm 
of  Bruno  become  the  res  cogitans  and  res  extensa  of  Descartes. 
The  simplifying  work  goes  on,  and  Descartes'  res  cogitans  becomes, 
for  Locke,  a  tabula  rasa,  still  further  impoverished,  "innate  ideas" 
being  denied.  The  Cartesian  dualism  was  not  so  intolerable, 
because  innate  ideas,  through  the  demonstration  of  the  existence 
of  God,  provided  some  sort  of  connection,  by  means  of  "  occa- 
sionalisms," "pre-established  harmonies,"  etc.  But  Locke  was 
harder  pressed  to  find  the  connection  between  the  tabula  rasa  mind 
and  the  world.  The  embarrassment  is  relieved  somewhat  by 
Berkeley's  startling  innovation,  but  that  is  soon  overthrown  by 
Hume.  There  is  a  chasm  now  between  even  the  surface  and  the 
body  of  the  tabula,  and  the  impressions  on  the  once  rasa  surface 
give  absolutely  no  clue  to  the  existence  of  the  reality  for  which 
they  seem  to  stand.  Real  connections  between  God  and  the  world, 
between  self  and  nature,  have  utterly  disappeared.  The  two 
partial  dichotomies  of  Descartes  have  produced  an  absolutely 
complete  trichotomy.  Rationalism  and  deism  have  reduced  reality 
to  utter  barrenness.  Such  is  the  result  of  the  progressive 
impoverishment  of  the  erstwhile  meaningful  human  microcosm 
by  the  assiduous  application  to  it  of  the  ideal  of  mathematics  and 
mechanics. 

The  great  significance  of  Rousseau  is,  in  a  word,  his  effectual 
affirmation  of  the  truth  that  there  is  much  in  the  human  microcosm 
besides  a  mathematical  intellect.  As  Descartes  had  begun  by 
shutting  out  the  "animal  spirits"  from  the  confines  of  the  soul 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  57 

(the  real  res  cogitans),  Rousseau  reversed  the  whole  matter  by 
submerging  the  mind  in  the  feelings. 

To  re-enrich  the  self  was  inevitably  to  close  up  the  fatal  dualisms 
of  the  past  two  centuries,  and  before  long  Herder  was  showing  that 
the  individual  and  the  nation  are  mystically  one,  ScheUing  that 
the  self  and  nature  are  mystically  one,  Schleiermacher  that  man  and 
God  are  mystically  one,  Fichte  that  moral  will  and  knowledge 
process  are  mystically  one — in  a  word,  the  whole  new  age  is  rejoicing 
in  the  rediscovered  unity  of  life.  It  finds  its  great  intellectual 
statement  in  Hegel. 

2.  But  in  this  rich  and  rapid  development  the  basic  difficulties 
of  the  mechanistic-mystical  dilemma  have  been  somewhat  obscured. 
The  passion  for  unity  has  outstripped  Kant's  cautious  dualism  of 
the  pure  reason  and  the  practical  reason.     The  novelty  of  his 
"Copernican  revolution,"  his  putting  of  the  whole  question  on  the 
new  level  of  constructive  idealism,  quite  overshadowed  the  enigma 
of  how  the  same  ego  can  find  both  necessity  and  freedom,  irrecon- 
cilables  as  they  are,  in  its  experience.     The  world  is  mechanical, 
said  Kant,  because  of  the  inexorable  workings  of  the  pure  reason; 
life  is  mystical  because  of  the  no  less  inexorable  workings  of  the 
practical  reason;  can  these  two  expressions  of  the  ego  be  reconciled  ? 
The  Critique  of  the  Judgment  was  an  attempt  to  solve  the  old 
dilemma,  stated  now,  not  in  objective  terms,  nor  in  objective- 
subjective  terms,  but  in  the  strictly  subjective  terms  of  "pure 
reason"  and  "practical  reason."     But  whatever  force  there  was 
in  the  solution  offered  in  the  Critique  of  the  Judgment  was  rendered 
obsolete  on  the  advent  of  Darwinism. 

3.  But  advancing  science  has  forced  upon  religion  once  more  the 
ancient  perplexity.     The  significance  of  "natural  selection"  and 
"conservation  of  energy,"  about  the  middle  of  the  century,  and 
the  whole  subsequent  development,  particularly  in  psychology, 
are  too  obvious  to  be  more  than  mentioned.     In  reaction  against 
materialism  (mechanism)  absolute  idealism  has  been  revived,  with 
many  modifications  and  refinements.     (Logically,  from  the  stand- 
point of  this  paper,  absolute  idealism  belongs  to  the  level  of  the 
second  period,  where  the  two  terms  are  self  and  nature,  ego  and 
world.     During   the   enlightenment   the   influence   of   mechanics 


58  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

enabled  the  mechanism  of  nature  to  swallow  up  the  self,  the  laws 
of  the  physical  world  to  reduce  the  ego  to  an  unreality.  In  absolute 
idealism  the  influence  of  Berkeley  and  Kant  enabled  the  mystical 
creativeness  of  the  self  to  swallow  up  nature,  the  laws  of  the  think- 
ing ego  to  reduce  the  physical  world  to  an  unreality.  For  rational- 
ism, the  world-machine,  including  the  cogs  of  "association,"  the 
levers  of  "pleasure-and-pain,"  is  all,  and,  except  as  a  piece  of  it, 
of  a  piece  with  it,  the  ego  is  nothing.  For  idealism  the  absolute 
ego  is  all,  and  the  world  of  events  and  things  and  men,  except  as 
a  piece  of  it,  of  a  piece  with  it,  is  nothing,  a  "mere  appearance.") 
For  the  rest,  the  religious  spirit  has  fallen  back  on  Kant's  cleavage 
between  the  moral  nature  and  the  intellect.  Such  is  the  logic 
of  the  whole  Ritschlian  movement.  We  are  shown  a  realm  of 
values  and  a  realm  of  existences.  These  are  incommensurables; 
science  and  religion  are  mutually  immune. 

4.  But  now  finally  the  task  of  Aristotle  in  the  first,  of  Leibniz 
in  the  second,  has  been  attempted  in  this  third  period  by  Bergson: 
In  a  word,  he  takes  up  the  problem  where  Kant  left  it,  and  with  the 
new  concept  of  evolution  strives  to  show  the  underlying  unity 
between  the  intellect,  the  organ  of  mechanism,  which  reveals  a 
world  determined  at  every  point,  and  intuition,  the  organ  of 
mysticism,  which  reveals  a  world  of  spontaneity  and  freedom. 

Of  Bergson's  treatment  of  the  problem  and  of  the  lesson  which 
the  whole  story  of  the  problem  teaches  as  to  the  future  method  of 
approach  I  shall  speak  in  the  following  chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION— Continued 

Modern  philosophy  had  its  roots  in  a  quickened  sense  of  the 
distinction  between  the  human  self  and  the  non-human  world  in 
the  midst  of  which  its  existence  is  cast.  This  enhanced  self- 
consciousness  of  man  began  to  move  around  two  foci  of  difficulty: 
on  the  one  hand  the  freshly  stimulated  intellect  was  keenly  aware 
of  its  privilege  of  striving  to  know  its  environing  world  at  first  hand ; 
on  the  other  the  new  evaluation  of  human  worth,  accompanied 
by  diminution  of  vital  interest  in  the  traditional  " other"  world  of 
ecclesiastical  thought,  inevitably  threw  the  objective  " natural" 
world  into  the  position  of  a  more  or  less  enigmatical  vis-a-vis. 
Hence  developed  at  once  a  twofold  dualism,  that  of  the  knower 
and  the  object-of -knowledge,  and  of  the  self  and  the  non-human 
"other."  To  comprehend  the  difficulties  of  the  former  phase  of 
this  dualism  has  been  the  task  of  epistemology ;  to  solve  those  of  the 
latter,  the  philosophical  problem  of  religion.  The  two  are  obviously 
closely  interwoven.  Any  solution  of  either  one  will  ultimately 
have  to  reckon  with  the  other.  The  great  need  is  for  a  philosophy 
that  embraces  both  problems  from  a  unitary  point  of  view,  and 
works  always  with  an  empirical  rather  than  a  speculative  method. 

For  an  empirical  theology,  of  course,  the  second  of  these  two 
dualisms  and  its  various  difficulties  and  proposed  solutions  is  of 
primary  importance.  But  the  moral  self,  which  must  face  its  en- 
vironing non-human  world  and  discover,  for  weal  or  woe,  whether 
that  world  is  " spiritual"  or  "material,"  is  also  a  knowing  self, 
and  the  value  of  its  religious  convictions  must  always  depend 
ultimately  on  the  validity  of  its  cognitional  processes.1  To  the 
primary  aspect  of  this  twofold  problem  the  present  chapter  is  de- 
voted; of  the  other,  its  indispensable  complement,  a  discussion  will 
be  given  later. 

1  "Cognitional"  is  here  used  in  the  broadest  sense,  as  including  any  form  of  con- 
sciousness that  seems  to  grasp  reality. 

59 


60  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

In  the  preceding  chapter  I  have  made  an  effort  to  state  in 
brief  and  simple  outlines  the  way  in  which  what  I  have  called  the 
mechanical-mystical  dilemma  has  presented  itself  in  the  course  of 
philosophical  reflection.  It  was  pointed  out  that  when  serious 
reflection  is  thrown  back  upon  nature,  on  the  collapse  of  some 
long-standing  supranature  scheme  of  things,  man  always  finds 
some  aspects  of  this  non-supernatural  environment  which  elicit 
from  him  social  responses,  more  vague,  less  anthropomorphic, 
to  be  sure,  than  the  original  animism  (or  "animatism")  of  primi- 
tive religion,  but  no  less  truly  social  in  their  essential  character. 
*Of  such  social  responses  to  the  non-human  environment  (in  other 
than  these  social  moods  called  the  physical  world)  the  hylozoism 
of  the  lonians  was  typical,  as  also  the  "nature  poetry"  of  Bruno 
and  Boehme.  This  sort  of  attitude,  instinctive-reflective,  I  have 
called  mysticism  (or  classical  mysticism  to  distinguish  it  clearly 
from  the  other  type,  which  is  an  attitude  directed  toward  the 
clearly  supernatural  socii  of  the  divine  " other"  world).  This 
social  sort  of  attitude  toward  nature,  however,  is  continually 
checked  and  modified  by  the  mechanical  habits  of  thought  and 
action  which  the  events  and  things  of  life  ordinarily  elicit  from  us. 
The  mystical  attitude  and  the  mechanical  attitude  are  thus  pitted 
against  each  other,  neither  one  being  able  to  force  the  other  com- 
pletely from  the  field.  Thus  through  philosophy  runs  the  mystical- 
mechanical  dilemma. 

It  was  pointed  out,  further,  that  the  outstanding  efforts  to  find 
some  resolution  of  this  dilemma  have  moved  upon  one  or  other 
of  three  levels.  In  the  first  period,  that  of  Greek  philosophy, 
the  problem  was  typically  upon  an  objective  level;  in  the  second, 
from  Bruno1  to  Leibniz,  subjective-objective,  that  is,  the  external 
physical  world  is  mechanically  interpreted,  the  inner  world  is  felt  to 
be  spiritual,  that  is,  it  is  mystically  interpreted,  and  hence  the 
problem  of  the  relation  between  the  microcosm  and  the  macrocosm, 
the  res  cogitans  and  the  res  extensa,  the  "monad"  which  is  soul 

1  In  its  beginnings,  it  is  true,  this  period  attributes  to  the  "macrocosm"  a  quasi- 
personal  quality,  under  the  idea  of  natura  naturans,  and  in  so  far  it  remains  on  the 
first  or  objective  level.  But  the  subjective-objective  dualism  is  soon  clearly  formu- 
lated by  Descartes. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  6 1 

and  the  "monad"  which  is  (or  seems  to  be)  matter.  Though 
Rousseau  and  the  Romantic  movement  gave  a  check  to  the  victory 
which,  in  rationalism,  mechanism  seemed  to  be  winning  over 
mysticism,  the  advent  of  physiological  psychology,  in  particular, 
plunged  thought  into  the  old  dilemma  again,  and  during  the  last 
three-quarters  of  a  century  the  battle  has  been  waged  with  increas- 
ing bitterness,  on  the  question  whether  the  soul  or  the  mind  can 
have,  rightfully,  any  mystical  evaluation  at  all,  or  whether  the 
human  spirit  must  be  seen  in  the  last  analysis  as  only  an  exceedingly 
complex  mechanism  of  strictly  material  forces  or  elements.  Of  the 
tendency  to  give  the  inner  life  this  latter  purely  mechanistic  inter- 
pretation, Haeckel's  philosophy  is  typical.1 

On  the  third  level,  however,  the  problem  is  given  a  distinctly 
new  formulation  by  Kant.  His  " Copernican  revolution"  consists, 
in  a  word,  in  relegating  the  question  of  the  ultimate  nature  of 
reality,  as  it  is  apart  from  human  consciousness,  to  the  limbo  of  the 
unknowable  and  in  striving  instead  to  understand  how  it  is  that 
the  human  mind,  by  virtue  of  its  very  constitution,  gives  to  experi- 
ence the  two  incompatible  aspects  of  necessity  and  freedom,  and 
then  to  discover  the  underlying  unity  of  this,  the  mind's  twofold 
activity,  which  produces  these  apparent  irreconcilables.  The 
explanation  of  how  the  mind  mechanizes  experience  is  given  in  the 
Critique  of  the  Pure  Reason;  of  how  it  mysticizes  experience,  in 
the  Critique  of  the  Practical  Reason;  of  how  these  two  are  funda- 
mentally unitary,  in  the  Critique  of  the  Judgment  (especially  the 
first  part,  concerning  the  aesthetic  judgment). 

It  will  be  helpful  to  make,  for  the  present,  a  definite  effort  to 
keep  this  phase  of  the  significance  of  Kant's  innovation  distinct 
from  the  epistemological  questions  with  which  it  is  so  closely  con- 
nected. So  far  as  the  religious  problem  is  concerned  the  importance 
of  Kant  consists  simply  in  this:  first,  that  the  mechanical-mystical 
dilemma  becomes  primarily  a  question  of  how  the  human  mind 
by  virtue  of  its  own  operations  gives  of  the  same  facts  both  a 
mechanistic  and  a  mystical  interpretation ;  and  that,  secondly,  the 

1  Haeckel,  in  reality,  only  pushes  the  problem  back  to  the  first  level,  in  that  he 
attributes  to  the  material  atom  a  rudimentary  sort  of  feeling  or  inclination — only 
one  more  of  the  many  modifications  of  hylozoism. 


62  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

reconciliation  of  these  irreconcilables  is  seen  to  be  primarily  a 
psychological  and  not  a  metaphysical  problem.  This  is  the  new 
cue  for  the  discussion  of  the  old  problem.  In  so  far  as  it  has  been 
ignored  by  the  nineteenth-century  philosophy  nothing  new  has 
been  added  to  the  earlier  viewpoints.  And  for  the  most  part  it  has 
been  ignored  on  account  of  three  different  directions  in  which  the 
philosophy  of  the  century  has  moved. 

1.  The   epistemological   difficulties   of   a   human  idealism   at 
once  pushed  philosophers  on  to  an  absolute  idealism.     Within  this 
" absolute"    doctrine    the    same    mechanistic-mystical    dilemma 
asserted  itself  again,  so  that,  as  in  the  case  of  rationalism  and 
Rousseau,  there  was  the  antagonism  of  the  mathematical-logical 
ideal  and  the  ethical-emotional  ideal,  in  absolute  idealism  we  find 
a  rationalistic  dialectic  which  tends  toward  a  denial  that  the 
absolute  is  "personal"   (e.g.,  Bradley),  and  an  ethico-mystical 
tendency  which  asserts  that  the  absolute  is  " personal"    (e.g., 
Royce).    But  obviously  any  attempt  at  a  reconciliation  of  these 
opposing  viewpoints  must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  meta- 
physical or  merely  dialectical;    and  such  an  undertaking  is  not 
in  line  with  the  psychological   method  which  Kant  undertook 
(which,  it  is  true,  gave  place  to  a  logical  and  metaphysical  pro- 
cedure before  his  task  had  been  carried  very  far). 

2.  The  inevitable  reaction  against  idealism  carried  the  problem 
back  at  once  to  the  first,  the  objective,  level.     Herbart's  "reals," 
for  instance,  are  an  attempted  amalgamation  of  the  primitive  static 
and  the  primitive  dynamic  conceptions — the  "reals"  are  abso- 
lutely changeless  in  themselves,  and  yet  each  seeks  to  "preserve 
its  identity  against  disturbances  on  the  part  of  the  other  reals." 
The  common,  unconfessed  assumption  of  all  such  systems,  from 
Democritus  to  Haeckel,  is  that  if  one  can  but  reduce  the  non- 
dynamic (the  non-mystical  or  mechanical)  and  the  dynamic  (the 
mystical)  phases  of  experience  each  to  the  lowest  conceivable 
terms,  they  will  somehow  fuse  in  a  single  type  of  existence,  a  simple 
entity.    The  success  of  all  such  systems  depends  upon  either  an 
elusive  fallacy  of  equivocation,  as  in  the  case  of  Leibnitz'  use  of  the 
term  "representation,"  or  the  uncritical  acceptance  of  a  hyphenated 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  63 

atom  or  monad  in  place  of  the  rejected  enigma  of  a  hyphenated 
(mechanical-mystical)  world. 

3.  The  century  has  been  characterized  by  heroic  efforts  to  ignore 
both  the  religious  and  the  epistemological  problems  by  restricting 
philosophical  attention  to  the  questions  of  the  relation  of  the  self 
and  its  human  environment.  But  it  is  interesting  to  observe  how 
inevitably  these  movements  are  forced  to  come  ultimately  face 
to  face  with  the  very  extra-human  reality  from  which  they  tried  to 
withdraw  reflection.  In  this  third  tendency  there  are  three  clearly 
distinguishable  types,  (a)  Positivism.  But  note  that  Comte,  in 
his  later  days,  recognizes  the  need  of  religion  to  supply  the  social 
movement  with  an  adequate  dynamic,  and  therefore  elaborates  his 
" religion  of  humanity";  this  is  a  long  step  toward  grounding 
ethics  in  an  extra-human  background,  for  " humanity"  spans 
the  ages  and  takes  on  some  sort  of  cosmic  significance.  Guyau 
goes  farther  and  describes  ethical  conduct  as  a  sort  of  co-operation 
with  the  cosmos  or  with  nature,  (b)  Utilitarianism.  But  note 
that  Spencer's  evolutionism  drags  the  utilitarian  ethics  irresistibly 
into  the  realm  of  the  philosophy  of  the  extra-human  by  raising 
the  question  as  to  the  relation  between  the  law  of  biological  survival 
and  the  law  of  human  conduct;  through  Huxley  and  Green  this 
issue  is  pushed  on  into  an  idealistic  metaphysics,  (c)  In  Germany, 
Max  S timer  and  Bahnsen  give  the  non-metaphysical  ethics  an 
utterly  individualistic  tendency,  defending  a  regardlessly  solipsistic 
morality.  Deprived  thus  of  even  its  social  anchorage  (which  it 
had  in  those  typical  French  and  English  movements),  the  reaction 
against  the  philosophical  tradition,  with  its  apparently  unsolvable 
religious  and  epistemological  perplexities,  finds  a  frantic  culmina- 
tion in  the  Nietzschian  demand  for  a  " revaluation  of  all  values." 

We  come  back  then  to  the  question  as  to  how  far  Kant's  formu- 
lation of  the  mechanical-mystical  dilemma  has  guided  philosophy 
in  the  last  century.  In  one  way  his  example  has  had  a  very  great 
effect,  in  the  practical  dualism  of  existence  and  value,  of  intellectual 
processes  and  appreciative  insight,  of  scientific  method  and  religious 
faith,  which  has  played  so  large  a  part  in  recent  thought.  For 
example,  the  whole  Ritschlian  movement  is  based  on  the  Kantian 


64  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

dualism  of  the  "pure  reason"  and  the  "practical  reason."  But 
this  neo-Kantian  movement  fails  to  do  justice  to  Kant's  concern 
for  the  underlying  unity  of  the  mind,  which,  as  said  above,  found 
expression  in  his  Critique  of  the  Judgment. 

The  philosopher  who  in  recent  times  has  made  the  greatest 
effort  to  orient  this  problem  of  the  mechanistic-mystical  aspects 
of  life  on  the  third  level,  that  of  Kantian  constructive  idealism, 
and  to  seek  a  solution  for  it  from  the  larger  Kantian  viewpoint 
is  Bergson.  He  starts,  as  Kant  did,  to  make  a  psychological  study 
of  the  contradictory  testimony  which  our  human  consciousness 
gives  as  to  the  nature  of  reality;  his  psychology  proves  inadequate, 
as  Kant's  did,  and  is  supplemented  by  metaphysics ;  he  combines  a 
constructive  idealism  with  dualism  and  realism,  as  Kant  also  did. 
(And  yet,  professing  a  radical  empiricism  and  a  thoroughgoing 
evolutionism,  he  seems  to  some  to  have  much  in  common  with  the 
"pragmatism"  of  William  James.)  It  seems  to  the  present  writer 
that  a  brief  examination,  of  Bergson's  philosophy  may  make  a 
particularly  appropriate  background  against  which  to  suggest  the 
direction  in  which  a  strictly  psychological,  non-metaphysical 
method  of  approaching  this  ancient  dilemma  must  probably 
proceed. 

Let  us  note,  in  the  first  place,  how  forcibly  Bergson  states  the 
issue  regarding  the  mechanical  and  mystical  aspects  of  experience, 
especially  in  that  realm  where  the  ancient  debate  has  taken  on  its 
peculiarly  modern  intensity,  that  of  the  inner  life.  This  is  the 
theme  of  the  first  of  his  three  major  works,  Essai  sur  les  donnees 
immediates  de  la  conscience.1  Note  in  the  first  place  his  discussion 
of  the  two  conceptions  of  causality,  the  mathematical  and  the 
dynamic.2  These  two  conceptions  are  continually  striving  to 
replace  each  other. 

Unfortunately  the  habit  has  grown  up  of  taking  the  principle  of  causality 

in  both  senses  at  the  same  time Sometimes  we  think  particularly  of  the 

regular  succession  of  physical  phenomena  and  of  the  kind  of  inner  effort  by 
which  one  becomes  another;  sometimes  we  fix  our  mind  on  the  absolute  regu- 

1  Paris,  1889;  English  translation  by  Pogson,  Time  and  Free  Witt.  Macmillan, 
1910  (sd  ed.  1913). 

3  Op.  cit.,  pp.  204  ff.  and  211  ff. 


'  THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  65 

larity  of  the  phenomena,  and  from  the  idea  of  regularity  we  pass  by  impercep- 
tible steps  to  that  of  mathematical  necessity And  we  do  not  see  any 

harm  hi  letting  these  two  conceptions  blend  into  one  another  and  in  assigning 
greater  importance  to  the  one  or  the  other  according  as  we  are  more  or  less  con- 
cerned with  the  interests  of  science.1 

But  with  the  progress  of  science  this  quasi-personal  notion  of 
causation  is  more  and  more  excluded  in  favor  of  mathematical 
equivalence. 

The  sundering  of  these  two  ideas  is  an  accomplished  fact  in  the  natural 
sciences.  The  physicist  may  speak  of  forces  and  even  picture  their  mode  of 
action  by  analogy  with  an  inner  effort,  but  he  will  never  introduce  this  hypothe- 
sis into  a  scientific  explanation.  Even  those  who,  with  Faraday,  replace  the 
extended  atoms  by  dynamic  points  will  treat  the  centres  of  force  and  the  lines 
of  force  mathematically,  without  troubling  about  force  itself  considered  as  an 
activity  or  an  effort.  It  then  comes  to  be  understood  that  the  relation  of 
external  causality  is  purely  mathematical  and  has  no  resemblance  to  the 
relation  between  psychical  force  and  the  act  which  springs  from  it.2 

Science  cannot  deal  with  tune  and  motion  except  on  condition  of  first 
eliminating  the  essential  and  qualitative  element  of  time,  duration,  and  of 
motion,  mobility.3 

Nevertheless,  we  cannot  entirely  succeed  in  mathematicizing 
the  natural  world.  On  this  pertinacity  of  the  anthropopathic  ele- 
ment in  our  conception  of  nature,  the  way  in  which  some  not 
entirely  necessary  factor  seems  to  remain,  our  feeling  for  a  residual 
spontaneity  in  the  natural  process,  note  the  following: 

We  certainly  feel,  it  is  true,  that  although  things  do  not  endure  as  we  do 
ourselves,  nevertheless  there  must  be  some  reason  why  phenomena  are  seen  to 
succeed  one  another  instead  of  being  set  out  all  at  once.  And  this  is  why  the 
notion  of  causality,  although  it  gets  indefinitely  near  that  of  identity,  will 
never- seem  to  us  to  coincide  with  it,  unless  we  conceive  clearly  the  idea  of  a 
mathematical  mechanism  or  unless  some  subtle  metaphysic  removes  our 
very  legitimate  scruples  on  that  point.* 

With  regard  to  the  inner  life  there  is  the  same  mechanical- 
mystical  dilemma  as  in  the  case  of  outer  fact. 

There  are  finally  two  different  selves,  one  of  which  is,  as  it  were,  the  ex- 
ternal projection  of  the  other,  its  spatial  and,  so  to  speak,  social  representation. 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  216  (last  italics  mine).  3  Op.  cit.,  p.  115. 

2  Op.  cit.,  pp.  218-19.  4  Op.  cit.,  p.  210. 


66  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

We  reach  the  former  by  deep  introspection,  which  leads  us  to  grasp  our  inner 
states  as  living  things,  constantly  becoming,  as  states  not  amenable  to 
measure,  which  permeate  one  another  and  of  which  the  succession  in  duration 
has  nothing  in  common  with  juxtaposition  in  homogeneous  space.  But  the 
moments  at  which  we  thus  grasp  ourselves  are  rare,  and  that  is  just  why  we  are 
rarely  free.  The  greater  part  of  the  time  we  live  outside  ourselves,  hardly 
perceiving  anything  of  ourselves  but  our  own  ghost,  a  colorless  shadow  which 
pure  duration  projects  into  homogeneous  space.  Hence  our  life  unfolds  in 
space  rather  than  in  tune;  we  live  for  the  external  world  rather  than  for  our- 
selves; we  speak  rather  than  think;  we  "are  acted"  rather  than  act  ourselves. 
To  act  freely  is  to  recover  possession  of  oneself,  and  to  get  back  into  pure 
duration.1 

But,  in  our  view,  there  is  a  third  course  which  might  be  taken,  namely, 
to  carry  ourselves  back  in  thought  to  those  moments  of  our  life  when  we  made 
some  serious  decision,  moments  unique  of  their  kind,  which  will  never  be 
repeated — any  more  than  the  past  phases  in  the  history  of  a  nation  will  ever 
come  back  again.  We  should  see  that  if  these  past  states  cannot  be  adequately 
expressed  in  words  or  artificially  reconstructed  by  a  juxtaposition  of  simpler 
states,  it  is  because  in  their  dynamic  unity  and  wholly  qualitative  multiplicity 
they  are  phases  of  our  real  and  concrete  duration,  a  heterogeneous  duration  and 
a  living  one.  We  should  see  that,  if  our  action  was  pronounced  by  us  to  be 
free,  it  is  because  the  relation  of  this  action  to  the  state  from  which  it  issued 
could  not  be  expressed  by  a  law,  this  psychic  state  being  unique  of  its  kind  and 
unable  ever  to  occur  again.  We  should  see,  finally,  that  the  very  idea  of 
necessary  determination  here  loses  every  shred  of  meaning,  that  there  cannot  be 
any  question  either  of  foreseeing  the  act  before  it  is  performed  or  of  reasoning 
about  the  possibility  of  the  contrary  action  once  the  deed  is  done,  for  to  have 
all  the  conditions  given  is,  in  concrete  duration,  to  place  oneself  at  the  very 
moment  of  the  act  and  not  to  foresee  it.  But  we  should  also  understand  the 
illusion  which  makes  the  one  party  think  that  they  are  compelled  to  deny 
freedom,  and  the  others  that  they  must  define  it.  //  is  because  the  transition 
is  made  by  imperceptible  steps  from  concrete  duration,  whose  elements  permeate 
one  another,  to  symbolical  duration,  whose  moments  are  set  side  by  side,  and  conse- 
quently from  free  activity  to  conscious  automatism.  It  is  because,  although 
we  are  free  whenever  we  are  willing  to  get  back  into  ourselves,  it  seldom  happens 
that  we  are  willing.  It  is  because,  finally,  even  in  the  cases  where  the  action 
is  freely  performed,  we  cannot  reason  about  it  without  setting  out  its  condi- 
tions externally  to  one  another,  therefore  in  space  and  no  longer  in  pure  dura- 
tion. The  problem  of  freedom  has  thus  sprung  from  a  misunderstanding ;  it  has 
been  to  the  moderns  what  the  paradoxes  of  the  Eleatics  were  to  the  ancients, 
and,  like  these  paradoxes,  it  has  its  origin  in  the  illusion  through  which  we 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  231-32. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  67 

confuse  succession  and  simultaneity,  duration  and  extensity,  quality  and 
quantity.1 

In  whatever  way,  in  a  word,  freedom  is  viewed,  it  cannot  be  denied  except 
on  condition  of  identifying  time  with  space;  it  cannot  be  defined  except  on 
condition  of  demanding  that  space  should  adequately  represent  time;  it  cannot 
be  argued  about  in  one  sense  or  the  other  except  on  condition  of  previously  con- 
fusing succession  and  simultaneity.  All  determinism  will  thus  be  refuted 
by  experience,  but  every  attempt  to  define  freedom  will  open  the  way  to 
determinism.2 

Certainly  we  are  under  a  great  obligation  to  Bergson  for  stating 
so  clearly  the  dilemma  of  the  mind  that  is  both  religious  and 
scientific.  The  fact  stands  out — amazing,  fascinating.  In  the 
great  moments  of  life  we  know  ourselves  to  be  free,  but  we  can  give 
no  account  of  the  experience  in  definite  description,  without,  ipso 
facto,  showing  the  whole  experience  to  be  utterly  determined,  step 
by  step,  element  by  element,  in  unbroken  and  unbreakable  suc- 
cession of  cause  and  effect,  condition  and  consequence.  We  know 
our  own  free  act  as  free  and  spontaneous,  but  the  moment  we 
reflect  upon  it  our  freedom  utterly  vanishes.  The  Greeks  began  this 
baffling  quest  by  finding  the  world,  self-contradictingly,  both 
spirit  and  matter,  both  spontaneous  and  machine-like,  both  fortui- 
tous congeries  of  soulless  atoms  and  meaningful  system  of  events 
and  ends.  For  us  moderns  the  struggle  of  the  two  motifs  has  been, 
by  psychology,  reduced  to  the  more  bitterly  contested  arena  of 
inner  experience.  That  this  is  the  core,  the  crux,  of  the  religious 
problem,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  The  fact  that  Bergson  has  put 
his  finger  so  definitely  and  clearly  upon  it  and  has  offered  an  appar- 
ently promiseful  solution  is  ample  explanation  of  his  great  popu- 
larity with  thoughtful  religious  people. 

Let  me  anticipate  here,  for  the  sake  of  clearness  and  emphasis, 
the  point  which  I  hope  to  make  at  the  conclusion  of  this  chapter. 
Bergson' s  problem  turns  upon  this  transition  made  by  imperceptible 
steps  from  intuition  to  intellect,  from  the  mystical  to  the  mechanistic 
type  of  cognitional  consciousness.  The  question  is,  Are  these 
steps  really  imperceptible?  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  in  many 
places  Bergson  speaks  of  intuition  (or  instinct)  and  intellect  as 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  238-40  (italics  mine).  a  Op.  cit.,  p.  230. 


68  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

fused  and  blended  in  every  moment  of  consciousness  (and  so, 
one  would  think,  amenable  to  close  psychological  scrutiny  and 
possible  disentanglement),  he  has  conceived  of  them,  in  his  meta- 
physics, as  so  profoundly  different  in  their  respective  natures 
that  any  actual  psychological  account  of  the  "  transition,"  any 
analysis  of  the  "steps, "  from  intuitional  to  intellectual  operations  is 
simply  out  of  the  question.  If  his  psychology  had  been  adequate 
to  the  task  of  analyzing  these  so-called  "  imperceptible  steps," 
would  not  his  metaphysical  account  of  the  gulf  between  instinct 
and  intellect  have  been  quite  uncalled  for?  In  other  words,  if 
the  gulf  which  seems  to  yawn  between  them  could  be  seen,  by 
psychological  analysis,  to  be  filled  with  a  series  of  conscious  states 
differing  not  in  kind  but  only  in  innumerable  delicate  degrees,  no 
metaphysical  explanation  would  be  required,  for  the  gulf  would  not 
exist.  A  more  adequate  psychology  would  render  unnecessary  a 
more  "subtle  metaphysic."  This  doubtless  is  the  direction  in  which 
an  empirical  theology  must  look  for  light  on  its  primary  problem, 
the  mechanical-mystical  dilemma. 

What  then  is  the  explanation  which  Bergson  gives  of  this 
peculiarity  of  human  experience,  that  by  a  kind  of  mystical  direct 
apprehension  we  grasp  the  reality  of  spontaneity  and  freedom  but 
by  every  act  of  intellectual  reflection  thereon  we  inevitably  cognize 
our  acts  and  thoughts  as  utterly  determined,  of  this  "  illusion 
through  which  we  confuse  succession  and  simultaneity,  duration  and 
extensity,  quality  and  quantity,"  of  the  fact  that  "the  transition 
is  made  by  imperceptible  steps  from  concrete  duration,  whose  ele- 
ments permeate  one  another,  to  symbolical  duration,  whose 
elements  are  set  out  side  by  side"  ? 

The  explanation  is,  briefly,  as  follows: 

The  Original  Impetus,  the  Elan  vital,  the  primordial  "con- 
sciousness," like  a  jet  of  steam,  becomes  "congealed"  into  a  kind  of 
inert  negation  of  itself;  falls  back,  as  it  were,  upon  itself  and  so 
offers  a  kind  of  resistance  and  obstruction  to  its  own  free  movement. 
This  "inverse  movement"  of  "consciousness"  is  "matter."  But 
the  Elan  vital  pushes  its  way  into  matter,  retarding  its  "inverse" 
tendency,  in  part  held  back  by  it  and  in  part  carrying  it  along  on  its 
own  current.  In  this  partial  imprisoning  of  the  Impetus  by  its 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  69 

inverse  movement,  in  this  Organization  of  inert  matter  by  "con- 
sciousness," consists  what  we  mean  by  "life."  Life  takes  three 
directions — torpor,  instinct,  intellect.  These,  it  is  important  to 
note,  are  not  successive  stages  or  levels  but  parallel  branches  of 
evolution.  The  contrasted  characters  of  instinct  and  intellect 
are  explained  on  the  ground  that  in  its  progress  life  as  instinct  has 
been  turned  inward  upon  itself,  whereas  life  as  intellect  has  been 
turned  toward  matter.  Instinct  has  thus  a  power  of  getting 
directly  at  the  secrets  of  vital  processes,  whereas  intellect  must  play 
forever  upon  the  surface  of  living  things  as  upon  the  surface  of  inert 
solids. 

The  following  citations  (from  Mitchell's  translation  of  Creative 
Evolution)  will  make  clear  the  foregoing  interpretation. 

Consciousness,  or  supraconsciousness,  is  the  name  for  the  rocket  whose 
extinguished  fragments  fall  back  as  matter;  consciousness  again  is  the  name 
for  that  which  subsists  of  the  rocket  itself  passing  through  the  fragments 
and  lighting  them  up  into  organisms  [p.  261]. 

Life  appears  in  its  entirety  as  an  immense  wave  which  starting  from  a 
centre  spreads  outwards  and  which  on  almost  the  whole  of  its  circumference 
is  stopped  and  converted  into  oscillation  [p.  266]. 

That  undivided  movement  of  descent  which  is  materiality  itself  [p.  271]. 

The  double  form  of  consciousness  is  then  due  to  the  double  form  of  the 
real,  and  theory  of  knowledge  must  be  dependent  upon  metaphysics  [p.  178]. 

Vegetative  torpor,  instinct,  and  intelligence — these,  then,  are  the  elements 
that  coincided  in  the  vital  impulsion  common  to  plants  and  animals,  and 
which,  in  the  course  of  a  development  in  which  they  were  made  manifest  in  most 
unforeseen  forms,  have  been  dissociated  by  the  very  fact  of  their  growth.  The 
cardinal  error  which,  from  Aristotle  onwards,  has  vitiated  most  of  the  philosophies 
of  nature  is  to  see  in  vegetative,  instinctive,  and  rational  life,  three  successive  degrees 
of  the  development  of  one  and  the  same  tendency,  whereas  they  are  three  divergent 
directions  of  an  activity  which  has  split  up  as  it  grew.  The  difference  between 
them  is  not  a  difference  of  intensity,  nor,  more  generally,  of  degree,  but  of 
kind  [p.  135]. 

One  of  the  clearest  results  of  biology  has  been  to  show  that  evolution  has 
taken  place  along  divergent  lines.  It  is  at  the  extremity  of  two  of  these  lines — 
the  two  principal — that  we  find  intelligence  and  instinct  in  forms  almost  pure 

[p.  I75J. 

Intuition  and  intellect  represent  two  opposite  directions  of  the  work  of  con- 
sciousness :  intuition  goes  in  the  very  direction  of  life  itself;  intellect  goes  in  the 
inverse  direction  and  thus  finds  itself  naturally  in  accordance  with  the  move- 
ment of  matter  [p.  267!. 


70  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

Instinct  and  intellect  are  two  divergent  developments  of  one  and  the  same 
principle,  which  in  the  one  case  remains  within  itself,  in  the  other  steps  out  of 
itself  and  becomes  absorbed  in  the  utilization  of  inert  matter.  This  gradual 
divergence  testifies  to  a  radical  incompatibility  and  points  to  the  fact  that  it 
is  impossible  for  intelligence  to  reabsorb  instinct.  That  which  is  instinctive  in 
instinct  cannot  be  expressed  in  terms  of  intelligence  [p.  167]. 

Consciousness  is  essentially  free;  it  is  freedom  itself;  but  it  cannot  pass 
through  matter  without  settling  on  it,  without  adapting  itself  to  it.  This 
adaptation  is  what  we  call  intellectuality  [p.  270]. 

The  intellect  has  been  cut  out  of  it  [life]  by  a  process  resembling  that  which 
has  generated  matter  [p.  268]. 

If  consciousness  has  thus  split  up  into  intuition  and  intelligence  it  is  because 
of  the  need  it  had  to  apply  itself  to  matter  at  the  same  time  as  it  had  to  follow 
the  stream  of  life  [p.  178]. 

The  success  of  physics  would  be  inexplicable,  if  the  movement  which  con- 
stitutes materiality  were  not  the  same  movement  which,  prolonged  by  us  to 
its  end,  that  is  to  say,  to  homogeneous  space,  results  in  making  us  count, 
measure,  follow  in  their  respective  variations  terms  that  are  functions  one  of 
another.  To  effect  this  prolongation  of  the  movement,  our  intellect  has  only 
to  let  itself  go,  for  it  runs  naturally  to  space  and  mathematics,  intellectuality 
and  materiality  being  of  the  same  nature  and  having  been  produced  in  the 
same  way  [p.  219]. 

For — we  cannot  too  often  repeat  it — intelligence  and  instinct  are  turned 
in  opposite  directions,  the  former  toward  inert  matter,  the  latter  toward  life. 
Intelligence,  by  means  of  science,  which  is  its  work,  will  deliver  up  to  us  more 
and  more  the  secret  of  physical  operations;  of  life  it  brings  us,  and,  moreover, 
only  claims  to  bring  us,  a  translation  in  terms  of  inertia.  It  goes  all  around  life, 
taking  from  outside  the  greatest  possible  number  of  views  of  it,  drawing  it  into 
itself  instead  of  entering  into  it.  But  it  is  to  the  very  inwardness  of  life  that 
intuition  leads  us  [p.  176]. 

The  intellectual  representation  of  continuity  is  negative,  being  at  bottom 
only  the  refusal  of  our  mind  before  any  actually  given  system  of  decomposition 
to  regard  it  as  the  only  possible  one.  Of  the  discontinuous  alone  does  the  intel- 
lect form  a  clear  idea  [p.  154]. 

Of  immobility  alone  does  the  intellect  form  a  clear  idea  [p.  155]. 

The  intellect  is  characterized  by  a  natural  inability  to  comprehend  life 
[p.  165]. 

The  main  purpose  of  the  present  discussion  is  to  point  out,  first, 
that  Bergson's  philosophy  has  the  inveterate  mechanical-mystical 
dilemma  as  its  central  problem;  then,  that  his  discussion  which 
begins  with  psychological  analysis  (the  third  level,  upon  which 
the  problem  has  gained  a  footing  since  Kant's  great  innovation) 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  71 

is  soon  forced  to  re-enter  the  metaphysical  realm  because  of 
the  inadequacy  of  this  psychological  analysis;  and,  finally,  to  sug- 
gest, against  this  background,  the  direction  in  which  a  more 
tenacious  and  consistent  psychological  investigation  must  probably 
proceed  in  order  to  overcome  this  deficiency,  and  thus  enable 
empirical  theology  to  come  to  terms  with  science  upon  ground  that 
is  itself  a  proper  subject  for  strictly  scientific  treatment.  A  criti- 
cism of  the  Bergsonian  metaphysics,  therefore,  is  beside  the  mark. 
It  is,  however,  pertinent  to  the  main  issue  to  note  at  least  one 
point  (a  pivotal  point  it  is)  in  which  the  metaphysics  most  obvi- 
ously points  to  an  unsolved  psychological  problem,  and  to  indicate 
how  unsatisfactory  the  proffered  metaphysical  solution  is.  And 
the  point  in  question  is  not  merely  a  pivotal  point  so  far  as  Berg- 
son's  treatment  of  this  religious  problem  is  concerned;  it  is  like- 
wise essential  to  his  treatment  of  the  other,  the  epistemological, 
phase  of  that  great  underlying  self-and-nature  dualism  which,  as  I 
indicated  at  the  outset,  is  the  most  important  motif  of  modern 
philosophy.  I  refer  to  his  doctrine  of  the  relation  between  the 
spatiality  of  matter  and  the  spatiality  of  the  intellect.  Note 
the  following  characteristic  statements:1  " Determinations  of  space 
or  categories  of  the  understanding,  whichever  we  will,  spatiality 
and  intellectuality  being  moulded  on  each  other"  (p.  257).  "In- 
tellectuality and  materiality  have  been  constituted  in  detail  by 
reciprocal  adaptation"  (p.  186).  "The  division  of  unorganized 
matter  into  separate  bodies  is  relative  to  our  senses  and  to  our 
intellect,  and  matter,  looked  at  as  an  indivisible  whole  must  be  a 
flux  rather  than  a  thing"  (p.  186).  "It  is  our  perception  which 
cuts  inert  matter  into  distinct  bodies"  (p.  227).  But  compare 
with  these  last  two  statements  the  following:  "Things  have  a 
natural  tendency  to  fit  into  a  frame  of  this  kind."  "A  certain 
natural  geometry  suggested  by  the  most  general  and  immediately 
perceived  properties  of  solids"  (p.  161).  In  a  word,  space  is  partly 
real  and  partly  ideal;  matter  has  a  "certain  natural  geometry," 
and  ' '  all  the  operations  of  our  intellect  tend  to  geometry. "  "  When 
we  observe  that  a  thing  really  is  there  where  it  acts,  we  shall  be  led 
to  say  (as  Faraday  was)  that  all  the  atoms  interpenetrate  and 
1  Mitchell's  translation  of  Creative  Evolution. 


72  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

that  each  of  them  fills  the  world.  On  such  a  hypothesis,  the  atom, 
or  more  generally  the  material  point,  becomes  simply  a  view  of  the 
mind,  a  view  which  we  come  to  take  when  we  continue  far  enough 
the  work  (wholly  relative  to  our  faculty  of  acting)  by  which  we 
subdivide  matter  into  bodies.  Yet  it  is  undeniable  that  matter 
lends  itself  to  this  subdivision,  and  that  in  supposing  it  breakable 
into  parts  external  to  one  another,  we  are  constructing  a  science 
sufficiently  representative  of  the  real"  (p.  203). 

And  what  is  the  explanation  of  this  reciprocal  spatiality  of 
matter  and  intellect  ?  The  most  concise  statement  is  the  following: 
"The  space  of  our  geometry  and  the  spatiality  of  things  are  mutu- 
ally engendered  by  the  reciprocal  action  and  reaction  of  two  terms 
which  are  essentially  the  same,  but  which  move  each  in  the  direc- 
tion inverse  of  the  other  .  .  .  .  ,"z  a  statement  which  neither  in 
itself  nor  in  its  thirty-odd  pages  of  exposition  is  very  illuminating 
or  convincing.  But — and  this  is  the  important  thing — Bergson's 
treatment  suggests  here  the  very  point  at  which  the  problem  of 
knowledge  needs  most  to  be  attacked.  "This  long  analysis  was 
necessary  to  show  how  the  real  can  pass  from  tension  to  extension 
and  from  freedom  to  mechanical  necessity  by  way  of  inversion."3 
But  this  analysis  begins  with  a  little  psychological  introspection.3 
Query:  Might  not  a  more  thoroughgoing  psychology,  genetic  as 
well  as  introspective,  with  the  aid  of  physics,  give  us  a  more  empiri- 
cal and  hence  a  more  useful  account  of  this  undeniable  reciprocity 
of  spatiality,  of  quantityness,  between  thought  and  things,  which 
is  the  strength  of  exact  science  and  the  stronghold  of  realism  ? 

Let  us  now  note  some  general  aspects  of  Bergson's  psychology. 
Probably  its  chief  point  of  inadequacy  is  its  lack  of  an  appreciation 
of  the  instinctive  nature  and  primary  importance  of  social  experi- 
ence. For  Bergson  the  individual  seems  to  be  primary  and  social 
consciousness  secondary.  This  inadequacy  is  of  special  importance 
in  connection  with  the  question  of  the  self.  What  is  the  "funda- 
mental self"  and  what  are  the  "parasitic  selves"  of  which  he 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  202.    This  recalls  the  similar  fashion  in  which  Aristotle  resolved  the 
dilemma  as  it  shaped  itself  in  his  time,  namely  the  skilful  playing  upon  one  another 
of  two  mutually  necessary  and  strictly  complementary  conceptions. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  236.  *0/>.  cit.,  pp.  199-220. 


TEE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  73 

speaks  so  often  ?  Here  one  cannot  but  observe  how  little  Bergson 
appreciates  the  part  which  social  experience  plays  in  the  actualiza- 
tion of  any  real  selfhood.  For  him  the  parasitic  self  is  the  "spa- 
tialized,"  that  is,  social,  self.  The  fundamental  self  is  essentially 
non-social. 

As  the  self  thus  refracted  and  thereby  broken  to  pieces  is  much  better 
adapted  to  the  requirements  of  social  life  in  general  and  language  in  par- 
ticular, consciousness  prefers  it  and  gradually  loses  sight  of  the  fundamental  self. 
Below  the  self  with  well-defined  states,  a  self  in  which  succeeding  each  other 
means  melting  into  one  another,  and  forming  an  organic  whole.  .  .  ,  .  But  we 
are  generally  content  with  the  first,  i.e.,  with  the  shadow  of  the  self  projected 
into  homogeneous  space.1  ....  In  order  to  recover  this  fundamental  self, 
as  the  unsophisticated  consciousness  would  perceive  it,  a  vigorous  effort 
of  analysis  is  necessary,  which  will  isolate  the  fluid  inner  states  from  their 
image,  first  refracted,  then  solidified,  in  homogeneous  space.2 

But  to  discover  the  " fundamental  self"  by  withdrawing  from  all 
human  intercourse,  surely  that  is  impossible.  Yet  Bergson  is 
certainly  right  in  insisting  that  if  we  are  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  life's 
problem  we  must  discover  the  fundamental  self  and  assign  it  a 
rightful  sway  over  the  parasitic  selves.  That  indeed  is  a  most 
important  point  for  the  philosophy  of  religion.  But  an  empirical 
procedure  would  surely  require  every  man  to  answer  the  question, 
what  is  for  him  his  fundamental  self  ?  If  the  psychologist  can 
discover  any  unanimity  in  the  results  of  such  an  inquiry,  well  and 
good— such  a  definition  may  be  taken  as  authoritative.  But  the 
futility  of  looking  for  a  self  that  is  just  itself,  a  pure,  isolated,  uncon- 
ditioned self,  surely  is  apparent.  The  great  question  is,  In  what 
situation  is  the  self  most  active,  most  free,  most  alive  ?  What  is 
the  most  vital  relationship  in  which  we  find  it?  When  is  a  man 
most  truly  himself?  Even  our  freedom,  whenever  and  however 
deeply  experienced,  is  never  an  utterly  relationless  freedom.  We 
are  free  for  something,  from  something,  to  do  something,  to  be 
something.  Just  sheer  unadulterated  freedom  is  the  barest  ab- 
straction. And  furthermore,  it  may  well  be  that  the  less  impor- 
tant phases  of  life  are  not  so  much  parasitic  selves  as  conditioning 
and  contributing  selves.  The  fundamental  self  is  the  organizing 

1  Time  and  Free  Witt,  p.  128.  *  Ibid.,  p.  129. 


74  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

self,  the  dominating  self,  the  integrating  and  unifying  self,  the  self 
of  most  vital  function. 

The  psychology  of  Bergson,  then,  has  this  crucial  defect  of 
isolating  the  self.  But  this  is  a  twofold  isolation.  In  the  first  place 
the  self  is  regarded  as  fundamentally  individual,  atomistic.  The 
social  self  is  a  "parasitic  self."  The  "real  self  "  is  a  self  which  can 
never  be  known  in  social,  that  is,  spatialized,  experience.  In  the 
second  place  the  "real  self"  is  still  further  isolated  within  the 
larger  and  more  "spatial"  phases  of  even  personal  experience. 
To  find  this  real  self  one  must  turn  in  upon  the  deepest  of  "deep- 
seated  psychic  states."  Now  this  is  a  most  interesting  counter- 
part of  the  Cartesian  self.  The  self  which  has  figured  strategically 
in  the  post-Cartesian  epistemological  discussions  is  the  knowing  self. 
Cogito,  ergo  sum.  The  real  self  is  the  self  of  cognitive  function. 
This  cognizing  self  has  been  isolated  within  the  vague  general 
matrix  of  experience,  and  from  this  isolation  have  grown  the  whole 
brood  of  epistemological  perplexities.  But  for  Bergson  the  isolated 
self  is  the  exact  opposite  of  the  Cartesian  cognizing  self.  It  is  the 
self  which  does  not  cognize  but  feels,  intuits.  But  the  isolation  is 
no  less  extreme  and  no  less  troublesome.  For  the  Cartesian  the 
fatal  difficulty  is  to  pass  from  the  acts  of  the  isolated  cognizing 
self  to  the  common-sense,  everyday  acts  and  experiences  of  the 
human  organism.  For  Bergson  the  difficulty  is  to  pass  from  the 
acts  of  the  isolated  pure  durational  self  to  commonplace  knowledge 
and  social,  spatial  experience.  In  this  Bergson  is,  though  appar- 
ently so  far  removed  from  the  traditional  epistemologists,  really  at 
one  with  them.  Likewise  he  is  at  one  with  them  in  isolating  the 
self  from  the  social  organism  of  which  it  is  an  integral  part.  The 
two  sorts  of  isolation,  however,  are  practically  the  same.  It  is  a 
severing  of  the  vital  ties  between  the  so-called  real  self  and  its 
supposedly  less  real  experience.  The  importance  of  this  point 
cannot  be  overestimated.  With  such  a  psychology  no  one  can 
possibly  escape  the  necessity  of  seeking  in  metaphysics  a  cure  of 
the  troubles  which  follow  in  its  train.  It  surely  is  obvious  that 
since  such  an  isolation  of  the  self  is  artificial  any  other  solution  than 
an  undoing  of  this  isolation  is  bound  to  be  artificial.  If  this  isola- 
tion be  frankly  denied,  the  passing  by  "imperceptible"  steps  from 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  75 

the  experience  of  the  so-called  real  self  to  that  of  the  so-called 
parasitic  self  is  not  a  mystery  to  be  solved  by  a  "  sub  tie  meta- 
physics," but  a  process  capable  of  psychological  analysis. 

There  is  another  most  important  point  in  which  Bergson  has 
failed  to  scrutinize  closely  enough  the  actually  observable  work- 
ings of  the  human  mind.  The  business  of  the  intellect,  he  insists, 
is  to  facilitate  our  actions  upon  solids.  In  this,  and  in  so  far,  he 
is  an  "instrumentalist."  But  he  stops  far  short  of  the  broad  truth 
recognized  today  by  many  American  psychologists  and  logicians, 
namely,  that  intellectual  processes  are  "instrumental"  not  only  for 
action  upon  solids  but  for  all  desired  ends,  whether  they  be  ethical, 
religious,  political,  or  physical.  Not  only  so,  but  these  "instru- 
mental" forms  of  consciousness  are  not  merely  spatial  in  their 
essential  character;  rather  they  are  "abstract" — this  is  their 
very  usefulness,  in  that  irrelevant  characteristics  of  things  and 
events  are  pro  tempore  ignored,  and  only  the  one  or  the  few  char- 
acteristics of  those  things  or  events  which  are  of  supreme  impor- 
tance in  the  situation  are  emphasized  or  even  noticed.  No  doubt 
the  spatializing,  unitizing  type  of  "abstraction"  is  of  tremendous 
importance;  but  the  "intellectual"  processes  are  not  necessarily 
only  spatial.  "Spatiality"  is  no  doubt  a  conspicuous  character 
of  "intellectuality,"  but  by  no  means  all  of  it.  And  "fabrication," 
action  upon  solids,  is  no  doubt  a  conspicuous  example  of  instru- 
mental consciousness,  but  it  by  no  means  monopolizes  it. 

But  not  only  is  Bergson' s  metaphysics  made  necessary  by  the 
inadequacy  of  his  psychology;  not  only  is  this  metaphysics  quite 
unconvincing,  especially  in  such  a  central  matter  as  the  theory  of 
"inversion";  but  the  basic  distinction  between  instinct  and 
intellect  leads  logically  to  the  most  undesirable  practical  conse- 
quences. The  isolation  of  the  intuitional  self  from  the  intellectual 
self,  in  spite  of  the  "subtle  metaphysics"  which  seeks  to  reveal  their 
underlying  unity,  continues  the  divorce  of  religion  and  science;  and 
the  isolation  of  the  real  self  from  the  social  self  continues  the  divorce 
between  religion  and  social  endeavor.  Social  life,  civilization,  the 
technique  of  progress,  are  obviously  dependent  upon  the  intellect. 
All  mystical  experience,  all  sense  of  freedom  and  spontaneity,  all 
direct  sense  of  the  original  life,  these,  for  Bergsonism,  are  functions 


76  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

of  intuition.  To  save  our  souls  we  must  renounce  the  world. 
There  is  no  idea  of  a  corporate  salvation.  The  fusion  of  scientific 
social  service  and  religious  enthusiasm  is  logically  impossible.  But 
this  means  ethical  apriorism,  religious  fanaticism,  and  socially 
barren  intellectualism.  To  separate  the  real  self  and  the  social 
self,  the  self  of  intuition  and  the  self  of  collective  endeavor,  is  to 
divorce  the  vision  of  God  and  the  task  of  civilization,  to  paralyze  the 
Christian  conscience,  to  quench  the  dream  of  the  twentieth- 
century  religion  of  a  "new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth 
righteousness." 

To  summarize  the  foregoing  discussion  of  Bergson:  His  phi- 
losophy is  primarily  an  effort  to  resolve  the  mechanical-mystical 
dilemma  upon  the  plane  of  constructive  idealism  (the  third  level 
on  which  this  ancient  perplexity  has  moved).  This  task  evidently 
calls  for  a  psychological  examination  of  the  antagonistic  mechaniz- 
ing and  mysticizing  activities  of  consciousness,  and  an  attempt 
to  find  some  underlying  unity  of  the  two  tendencies.  Bergson, 
however,  has  recourse  to  a  so-called  intuitional  metaphysics  to  sup- 
plement his  psychology  ("theory  of  knowledge  and  theory  of  life" 
seeming  to  him  to  be  "inseparable").  The  real  reason,  however, 
why  he  so  soon  falls  back  upon  metaphysics  probably  is  that  his 
psychology  is  fundamentally  inadequate.  As  it  is,  the  core  of  his 
metaphysical  explanation,  the  theory  of  "inversion,"  is  not  by  any 
means  convincing,  and  the  dualism  of  intuition  and  intellect  is  not 
sufficiently  mitigated  by  Bergson's  theory  of  evolution  to  remove 
the  unfortunate  practical  dualism  of  religion  and  science,  religion 
and  social  endeavor.  What  then  are  the  chief  points  of  inadequacy 
in  the  psychology  with  which  Bergson  approaches  the  mechanical- 
mystical  problem  ?  There  are  four  such  points:  (a)  the  individual 
self  is  too  much  isolated  from  its  real  social  matrix;  (b)  the  "instru- 
mental" character  of  intellectual  processes  is  too  closely  restricted, 
being  affirmed  only  of  the  consciousness  accompanying  our  action 
on  solids;  (c)  the  instinctive-intuitional  and  the  intellectual  phases 
of  consciousness  are  too  rigidly  distinguished,  even  though  their 
fusion  in  common  experience  is  admitted;  (d)  no  effort  is  made 
toward  a  genuinely  genetic  psychological  study  of  the  "undeniable" 
mystery  of  a  mutual  spatiality  in  thought  and  things,  but  instead 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RELIGION  77 

we  are  given  a  purely  speculative  account  of  the  common  genesis 
of  intellect  and  matter. 

Of  the  first  two  of  these  four  defects  we  have  in  contemporary 
American  thought  abundant  correction:  of  the  first  in  our  social 
psychology1  and  of  the  second  in  the  literature  of  "experimental 
logic."2  Some  of  the  discussions  in  the  latter  have  a  bearing  also 
upon  the  third  point.3  But  so  far  as  I  am  aware  the*  last  two 
difficulties  have  not  been  discussed  in  any  way  that  throws  light 
upon  the  problem  of  religion.  It  is  the  question  involved  in  the 
third  of  the  four  points  urged  here  against  Bergson's  psychology 
that  is  most  crucial  for  the  primary  phase  of  the  problem  of  religion, 
which  is,  as  this  and  the  preceding  chapter  have  maintained,  the 
mechanical-mystical  dilemma.  I  have  already  stated  the  issue.4 
It  amounts  simply  to  this :  ignoring  for  the  time  being  the  question 
as  to  which  of  the  two  types  of  cognitional  consciousness  gives  us 
the  nearer  approach  to  reality,  we  are  primarily  concerned  to  under- 
stand how  or  why  we  do  move  from  one  type  to  the  other,  how  they 
are  related  to  each  other,  what,  in  a  word,  the  "  imperceptible 
steps"  actually  are  by  means  of  which  we  pass  from  the  moment 
of  "practical  reason"  to  that  of  "pure  reason,"  from  that  of 
"duration"  to  that  of  "spatiality,"  from  the  mystical  to  the 
mechanical,  from  religion  to  science.  For  surely  these  are  not  two 
incommensurable  activities  of  a  divided  ego,  but  are  part  and 
parcel  of  each  other,  inextricably  interwoven,  fused  by  innumerable 
connective  activities,  with  which  they  are  continuous,  into  an 
integral  organic  consciousness. 

1  E.g.,  Cooley,  Social  Organization;  Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order. 

3  E.g.,  Dewey,  et  al.,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory;  Moore,  "Existence,  Meaning, 
and  Reality,"  Decennial  Publications  of   the  University  of  Chicago,  First  Series, 
Vol.  III. 

s  E.g.,  Moore,  chapter  entitled  "The  Reformation  of  Logic,"  in  Creative  Intelli- 
gence, p.  75. 

4  Supra,  p.  67. 


CHAPTER  V 
CONCERNING  METHOD 

I  have  pointed  out  that  the  inveterate  mechanistic-mystical 
dilemma,  which  seems  to  be  the  crux  of  the  religious  problem, 
especially  as  it  presents  itself  today  under  the  general  antith- 
esis of  the  religious  and  the  scientific  view  of  the  world,  now, 
with  Bergson's  treatment  before  us,  demands  the  following 
formulation:  First,  how  shall  we  understand  the  underlying 
unity  of  the  mind's  operations  which  give  us  on  the  one  hand  a 
mystical  and  on  the  other  a  mechanistic  interpretation  of  the  world, 
since  we  cannot  be  content  to  leave  these  two  antithetical  types  of 
mental  operation  in  a  hopeless  dualism  ?  Bergson's  theory  of  the 
original  bifurcation  of  instinct  and  intellect  in  the  evolutionary 
process  whereby  the  Elan  vital  creates  its  way  through  the  resistance 
of  matter  has  suggested  that  probably  a  more  adequate  psycho- 
logical examination  of  the  contrasted  operations  of  intuition  and 
intellect  would  make  unnecessary  the  "  sub  tie  metaphysic"  which 
Bergson  proposes  as  an  explanation  of  the  ultimate  unity  of  these 
two  types  of  experience. 

In  the  second  place,  how  shall  we  understand  the  underlying 
linkage  between  our  intellectual  cognitions  and  the  material  world 
with  which  they,  in  exact  science,  so  successfully  deal  ?  (This  phase 
of  the  problem  is  dealt  with  in  Bergson's  theory  of  "inversion," 
which  holds  that  "intellectuality  and  materiality  have  been  con- 
stituted in  detail  by  reciprocal  adaptation.")1  Assuming  that  the 
organic  solidarity  of  intuition  and  intellect  could  be  revealed  by 
psychology,  how  can  this  organically  unitary  knowledge-activity 
be  seen  as  linked  up  inseparably  with  the  whole  substructure  of  our 
experienced  world  ?  For  linked  up  in  some  intimate  fashion  it  cer- 
tainly is,  upon  the  testimony  of  common  sense,  the  exact  sciences, 
and  the  whole  realistic  tendency  in  philosophy.  If,  now,  such  link- 
age could  at  last  be  brought  to  light  by  psychological  analysis,  there 

1  Creative  Evolution,  p.  186. 

78 


CONCERNING  METHOD  79 

would  then  appear  a  real  continuum  embracing  what  realism  would 
call  the  "  independent  reality,"  our  mechanical-mathematical  cog- 
nitions thereof,  and  our  mystical  interpretation  of  the  whole.  In 
other  words,  the  ancient  dilemma  would  be  resolved,  for  there  would 
no  longer  be  a  question  as  to  which  is  more  true,  our  mechanical 
or  our  mystical  interpretations  of  "reality,"  but  only  as  to  what 
sort  of  interpretation  carries  reality  farthest  in  its  unfolding  through 
human  reconstruction.  Or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  we  would  no  longer 
orient  human  interpretation  as  apposed,  in  its  double  aspect,  to 
" reality,"  but  rather  as  existing  in  the  living  midst  of  that  reality, 
a  dynamic  integral  part  thereof. 

So  much  for  a  condensed  statement  of  the  problem.  The  next 
question  is,  Can  psychology  give  us  an  answer  as  trustworthy  as  the 
results  of  scientific  investigation  in  other  fields  ?  If  our  theology 
is  to  be  truly  empirical,  it  must  work  with  scientific  tools.  Cer- 
tainly the  progress  of  experimental  psychology  in  recent  years 
should  encourage  us  to  hope  that  the  questions  suggested  above 
may  find  at  last  adequate  scientific  treatment.  Though  the  experi- 
mental method  as  applied  to  cognitional  and  allied  forms  of  con- 
scious experience  is  still  in  a  somewhat  chaotic  condition,  it  is 
certainly  becoming  more  and  more  an  exact  science,  and  to  it  we 
must  look  for  the  assured  results  which  dialectic  and  speculation 
have  failed  to  furnish. 

Probably  such  an  inquiry  as  is  here  suggested  would  deal  with 
such  points  as  the  following:  What  are  the  various  stages  and 
factors  in  the  perceptual  and  conceptual  apprehensions  of  motion 
as  they  approximate  toward  the  mechanistic  or  the  mystical  types 
respectively?  Probably  analysis  will  show  that  there  are  three 
broad  ways  in  which  motion  as  such  is  denuded  of  mystical  mean- 
ing: (a)  the  evaporation,  so  to  speak,  of  immediate  emotional  inter- 
est through  mere  familiarity;  (b)  the  same  result  through  a  long 
regressus  of  causal  explanations,  that  is,  the  dedynamizing  of  the 
immediately  perceived  motion  through  more  or  less  remote  con- 
ceptual forms  of  movement  or  change;  (c)  the  assignment  of  a 
supernatural  cause,  robbing  the  motion  thus  of  its  intrinsic  interest. 
The  opposite  tendency  will  probably  be  seen  to  comprise  such 
factors  as  these:  (a)  the  enhancement  of  emotional  appraisal 


8o  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

through  the  relevance  of  the  motion  in  question  to  vital  and 
instinctive  interests;  (b)  the  tendency  to  clothe  the  motion  or 
movements  alluded  to  with  " tertiary"  qualities  through  the  inevi- 
tably stimulated  kinaesthetic  imagery  and  sensations;  (c)  the  rein- 
forcement of  such  a  tendency  by  the  social  imagery  which  these 
emotional  and  kinaesthetic  factors  usually  arouse  through  vague 
association. 

Again,  what  are  the  stages  and  factors  in  the  two  opposite  tend- 
encies which  center,  in  unstable  equilibrium,  so  to  speak,  in  the 
quantity-quality  perceptions  which  bulk  so  large  in  common  expe- 
rience, especially  the  visual  and  tactual  kinaesthetic  complexes  with 
their  spatial  and  other  components,  the  stuff  of  " primary"  and 
"secondary"  qualities?  Probably,  in  the  one,  the  abstracting 
function  of  attention  will  be  found  to  be  the  controlling  factor, 
while  in  the  other  the  feeling-tones  and  the  emotional  elements  into 
which  they  so  readily  pass  or  with  which  they  fuse  will  be  the  most 
important  point  for  study. 

Again,  how  do  the  imagery  and  reactions  appropriate  to  our 
contact  with  the  physical  environment  become  complicated  with  the 
imagery  and  reactions  appropriate  to  our  contact  with  the  social 
environment,  and  vice  versa  ?  How,  in  its  many  phases  or  degrees, 
does  personal  feeling  wax  and  wane  as  we  adjust  ourselves  to  the 
people  about  us,  displacing,  as  it  waxes,  the  non-personal  or  mere 
ihing-i eeling,  and  reinforcing  itself  with  the  latter  as  it  wanes  ?  And 
how,  on  the  other  hand,  does  the  non-personal  feeling,  the  ihing- 
attitude,  wax  and  wane,  with  its  varying  personal  feeling  comple- 
mentation, as  we  adjust  ourselves  to  the  inanimate  objects  and 
animals  about  us  ?  Obviously  habit  and  novelty,  the  thwarting  or 
forwarding  of  our  activities  by  the  objects  of  our  environment, 
directness  and  indirectness  of  interest — such  factors  are  here  of 
great  importance. 

More  specifically  the  two  categories  of  causation  and  purpose 
will  be  in  special  need  of  such  a  psychological  examination.  Instead 
of  two  conceptions  of  causation,  the  anthropopathic  notion,  com- 
posed mostly  of  the  "  feeling  of  effort, "  and  the  mathematical  notion 
of  "function,"  are  there  many  vaguely  different,  intermediate  sorts 
of  conception  ?  9  A  careful  examination  will  probably  discover  that 


CONCERNING  METHOD  81 

there  are.  What  are  they,  and  under  what  conditions  do  they 
arise  ?  And  how  many  varieties  of  finalistic  conception  are  there, 
and  how  does  the  mind  pass  through  the  various  stages,  from  the 
crudest  anthropoteleism  to  what  Bergson  would  call  "  radical  final- 
ism  "?  What  are  the  situations  in  which  the  various  types  are 
elicited?  And,  again,  what  light  can  this  sort  of  psychological 
approach  throw  upon  the  whole  matter  of  "existence"  and  "value"  ? 
Are  these,  also,  but  foci,  so  to  speak,  around  which  the  ellipse  of 
conscious  experience  swings,  "value"  judgments  and  attitudes 
always  tinged,  though  sometimes  in  the  minutest  degree,  with  the 
"existence"  quality,  "existence"  judgments  and  perceptions 
always  colored,  though  sometimes  also  in  slight  degree,  by  the 
"value"  factor?  And  if  so,  what,  once  more,  are  the  various 
determining  conditions  of  the  proportions  of  the  elements  in  the 
complex  ? 

For  the  present  I  can  only  express  my  conviction  that  such  a 
method  of  approach  is  as  promiseful  as  it  is  necessary  and  would 
prove  not  only  an  entirely  new  but  an  extremely  important  factor 
in  any  adequate  statement  of  the  religious  situation;  for  it  would 
doubtless  make  clear  what,  since  Kant's  time,  men  have  more  or 
less  dimly  apprehended,  namely,  that  the  antagonism  of  religion 
and  science  is  due  to  highly  contrasted  methods  of  cognition,  which, 
however,  are  somehow  continuous  with  each  other,  unless  the  mind 
be  a  house  hopelessly  divided  against  itself. 

In  the  meantime  let  us  note  that  "functional"  psychology  and 
the  so-called  "empirical"  logic  which  rests  immediately  upon  it 
have  pioneered  a  path  in  the  same  general  direction  as  that  indicated 
above.  Its  bearing  upon  the  philosophy  of  religion  can  perhaps  be 
most  briefly  pointed  out  by  passing  at  once  to  a  consideration  of 
some  contrasts  between  pragmatism  and  the  other  dominant 
philosophies  of  the  day  (for  pragmatism  is  in  philosophy  what 
functionalism  is  in  psychology  and  empiricism  is  in  logic).  And 
probably  the  contrast  most  closely  relevant  to  our  subject  is  that 
involved  in  the  discussion  of  the  so-called  "ego-centric  predica- 
ment."1 It  constitutes  a  chief  bone  of  contention  between  realism 

1  See  Perry,  Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,  pp.  129  fL;  also  Journal  of  Philoso- 
phy, Psychology,  and  Scientific  Method,  VII. 


82  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

and  idealism  and  as  such  serves  well  to  clarify  the  position  of  prag- 
matism as  contrasted  with  both. 

Both  realism  and  idealism  seek  in  primis  for  what  we  might  call 
the  citadel  of  consciousness,  the  very  core  of  cognition.  This  for 
both  of  them  is  the  act  of  pure  knowledge,  that  is,  knowledge  of  the 
formal  logic  type,  of  the  self-evident  kind,  of  the  sort  that  has  an 
inherent  authenticity.  Take,  for  instance,  the  point  from  which 
Bradley  begins  in  building  up  his  system  of  metaphysics  and  note 
how  it  is  just  what  I  have  called  the  citadel  of  consciousness.  "To 
think  is  to  judge,  and  to  judge  is  to  criticise,  and  to  criticise  is  to 
use  a  criterion  of  reality.  And  surely  to  doubt  this  would  be  mere 
blindness  or  confused  self-deception.  But  if  so,  it  is  clear  that,  in 
rejecting  the  inconsistent  as  appearance,  we  are  applying  a  positive 
knowledge  of  the  ultimate  nature  of  things.  Ultimate  reality  is 
such  that  it  does  not  contradict  itself;  here  is  an  absolute  criterion."1 
On  the  other  hand,  take  such  a  statement  as  the  following  on  the 
side  of  realism:  "The  ultimate  terms  of  knowledge  are  the  terms 
that  survive  an  analysis  that  has  been  carried  as  far  as  it  is  possible 
to  carry  i£."a  Logical  analysis,  then,  is  the  very  ideal  of  knowledge 
for  both  philosophies.  And,  so  to  speak,  around  this  citadel  a 
moat  is  dug,  an  important  separation  between  this  pure  knowledge 
and  the  innumerable  varieties  of  mere  " psychological"  knowledge, 
which,  indeed,  is  dangerous  ground,  infested  with  the  sources  of 
error.  The  depth  of  this  moat  is  greater  than  the  enemies  of  truth 
suppose;  that  is  just  its  practical  importance.  For  though  neo- 
realism  professes  to  treat  knowledge  "as  a  natural  event"  and 
bridges  the  gap  between  logical  knowledge  and  psychological 
knowledge  by  means  of  a  nervous  system,  stimulus-and-response, 
etc.,  this  bridge  is  truly  a  drawbridge,  for  while  contact  with  non- 
logical  experience  seems  plausible  enough  as  a  part  of  this  philoso- 
phy, for  strategical  purposes  the  connection  is  actually  severed.3 
Similarly  Bradley,  while  admitting  other  possible  criteria  of  reality, 
practically  and  indeed  explicitly  makes  the  difference  between  them 
and  the  one  taken  as  the  fundamental  criterion  a  difference  of  kind 
and  not  of  degree.  If,  then,  the  real  center  of  knowledge  is  an 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  136.  3  The  New  Realism,  p.  32. 

3  On  this  point  compare  Moore  in  Creative  Intelligence,  pp.  105  f . 


CONCERNING  METHOD  83 

isolated  logical  judgment,  we  have  indeed  a  "predicament."  But, 
as  it  seems  to  the  pragmatist,  it  is  a  predicament  for  the  idealist 
no  less  than  for  the  realist.  For  the  former  the  difficulty  is  to  con- 
ceive reality,  as  apprehended  from  this  logical  center,  as  in  any 
degree  more  attractive  than  a  cosmic  abstraction.1  For  the  realist, 
however,  the  "predicament"  is  no  less  embarrassing;  for  his  object 
is  not  to  prove  the  ultimately  purposeful  character  of  reality,  since 
his  preoccupation  is  with  science  and  not  with  religion,  but  to  show 
how  the  real  can  be  discovered  as  independent  of  experience.  Real- 
ism seeks  an  existential  sort  of  independence  in  reality  and  cannot 
find  it.  Idealism  finds  a  qualitative  sort  of  independence  in  the 
absolute  reality  and  does  not  want  it.  And  (we  cannot  repeat  it 
too  often)  the  core  of  the  trouble  is  that  both  have  really  dissociated 
logical  knowledge  and  non-logical  experience.  And  so  the  predica- 
ment is  not  that  our  human  world  is  ego-centric,  but  that  these 
philosophies  have  assigned  an  arbitrary  circumference  to  the  cog- 
nitive experience  from  within  which  our  exploration  and  discovery 
of  reality  must  obviously  begin.  At  the  core  Bergsonism,  idealism, 
and  realism  have  this  common  trait — they  assume,  as  a  basic  factor 
in  their  technique  of  discussion,  a  hiatus  between  pure  intellect  and 
merely  " psychological"  experience. 

Pragmatism  would  say,  then,  that  the  solution  of  the  deadlock 
must  and  does  come  from  removing  that  arbitrary  and  entirely 
artificial  delimitation  of  intellect.  That  is  done  by  doing  more 
thoroughly  what  realism  purports  to  do,  namely,  by  regarding 
knowledge  as  a  " natural  event";  that  is,  by  taking  our  functional 
social  psychology  all  the  way  with  us  and  refusing  to  drop  it  when 
formal  logic  steps  in  and  says  "thus  far  and  no  farther."  In  other 
words,  we  must  dig  no  moat  about  the  citadel  of  pure  knowledge, 
because,  forsooth,  pure  knowledge,  or  logical  thought,  is  not  a 
citadel  at  all.  The  real  tactics  of  the  intellectual  life  are  indeed 
more  akin  to  modern  methods  of  warfare  than  to  mediaeval.  Not 
even  the  mathematician  locks  himself  in  an  immovable  and  impreg- 
nable thought-fortress,  but  "digs  himself  in"  at  whatever  point  his 

1  See,  for  instance,  chap,  xxvii,  "Ultimate  Doubts,"  in  Bradley's  Appearance 
and  Reality.  Royce  is  finally  no  more  successful  in  demonstrating  an  absolute  which 
is  not  merely  abstract  and  logical. 


84  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

obstacles  threaten  his  advance.  That  is  just  what  we  are  all  doing 
in  all  intellectual  effort — when  face  to  face  with  problems  we 
intrench  ourselves  in  those  aspects  or  phases  of  our  whole  experience 
which  seem  at  the  time  to  be  steadfast  and  secure  and  attack  the 
uncertainties  and  perplexities  with  what  seem  to  be  the  most  avail- 
able or  most  effective  weapons  with  which  our  conscious  experience 
has  furnished  us.  We  are  " instrumentalists"  in  practice,  whether 
we  are  such  in  theory  or  not. 

We  must,  I  said,  dig  no  moat  around  "pure  knowledge";  which 
means  that  the  conception  with  which  psychology  furnishes  us  is 
of  cognitive  activities  that  are  inextricably  intermingled  with  other 
activities  of  perceptual,  sensational,  and  emotional  sorts,  which  ac- 
tivities in  turn  are  no  less  inextricably  interwoven  in  the  dynamic 
structure  of  our  far-reaching  environment.  In  a  word,  the  physical- 
psychical-social  organism  we  call  man  is  in  dynamic  connection  with 
his  environment,  and  within  his  complex  conscious  experience  there 
are  everywhere  dynamic  functional  connections  between  the  most 
abstract  and  the  most  emotional  phases  of  experience  and  those 
more  elementary  phases  which  we  call  motor,  sensory,  and  percep- 
tual. There  are  no  structural  cleavages  between  environment  and 
organism  nor  within  the  conscious  processes  of  the  organism.1 

But,  some  will  object,  this  functionalism  goes  too  far.  It  psy- 
chologizes all  entities  into  " instruments, "all  facts  into  useful  fictions, 
all  attainments  into  adjustments.  Instead  of  exploring  the  ontologi- 
cally  solid  shores  of  reality,  we  are  kept  forever  floundering  in  a  sea 

1  For  a  characteristic  statement  of  this  so-called  functional  point  of  view  see 
Irving  Miller,  The  Psychology  of  Thinking,  especially  chap.  vi.  Note  also  the 
following  statements,  from  the  "empirical  logic"  point  of  view,  as  represented  in 
A.  W.  Moore's  article,  "The  Reformation  of  Logic,"  in  Creative  Intelligence:  "The 
operations  of  habit,  instinct,  perceptions,  memory,  and  anticipation  become  logical 
when  instead  of  operating  as  direct  stimuli  they  are  employed  in  a  process  of  inquiry'' 

(p.  82).     "The  conditions  under  which  non-logical  conduct  becomes  logical 

The  transformation  begins  at  the  point  where  non-logical  processes  instead  of  operating 
as  direct  unambiguous  stimuli  and  response  become  ambiguous  with  consequent  inhi- 
bition of  conduct This  modification  of  form  and  function  constitutes 'reason' 

or  better  reasoning"  (p.  83).  "It  is  important  to  observe  that  these  forms  of  inter- 
action— instinct  and  habit,  perception,  memory,  etc. — are  not  to  be  located  in  either 
of  the  interacting  beings  [the  organism  and  the  environment]  but  are  functions  of  both. 
The  conception  of  these  operations  as  the  private  functions  of  an  organism  is  the 
forerunner  of  the  epistemological  predicament"  (p.  84;  italics  mine). 


CONCERNING  METHOD  85 

of  words.  For  these  many  centuries  the  profoundest  philosophers 
and  the  devoutest  souls  have  been  seeking  permanence  in  the  midst 
of  change,  unity  in  the  midst  of  plurality,  purpose  in  the  midst  of 
mechanism;  but  now  this  instrumentalist  doctrine  gives  us  all  and 
nothing.  For  our  monisms  become  useless  once  they  are  shown  to 
be  valid  only  because  and  hi  so  far  as  they  are  useful;  permanence 
is  shown  to  be  only  a  relative  permanence;  and  all  our  faith  in 
teleology  is  shown  to  be  but  the  by-product  of  imagination  in  its 
service  of  biological  and  social  adjustment.  Every  adjustment 
remakes  both  the  environment  and  the  organism,  and  nothing 
abides  but  adjustment,  adjustment  and  yet  more  adjustment! 

Is  there  then  nothing  to  which  we  may  assign  some  abiding 
metaphysical  status?  Let  us  avoid  phenomenalism  by  assigning 
the  metaphysical  quality  of  "reality"  to  the  whole  of  our  experience, 
at  a  lump  sum,  at  a  stroke.  Let  us  stop  talking  about  our  experi- 
ence of  reality  and  talk  of  experience  as  reality.  We  shall  thus  have 
to  recognize  that  in  spots,  as  it  were,  this  real  total  experience  gives 
us  a  kind  of  trouble  which  we  have  been  wont  to  call  unrealness. 
The  simplest  diagnosis  of  this  trouble  is  that  various  elements  of 
experience  are  discovered  to  fall  apart  or  to  become  frictional  among 
themselves.  The  established  connections  of  the  multifarious  ele- 
ments of  experience  are  found  to  be  ruptured.  In  other  words,  we 
find  that  some  part,  usually  a  comparatively  small  part,  of  experi- 
ence has  become  ''problem."  The  larger  part  which  retains  its 
stability  remains  "real."  In  everyday  language  we  call  this  intact 
portion  "fact."  The  specifically  reflective  process  of  thought  then 
begins  and  consists  essentially  in  an  examination  of  the  dislocated 
elements  of  our  experience  to  discover  where  the  tension  begins, 
what  are  the  factors  most  under  strain,  and  to  attempt  various 
modifications  of  the  involved  elements  in  the  effort  to  restore  the 
normal  condition  of  unstrained  interaction.  The  organic  vitality 
of  experience  is  such  that  it  is  autotherapeutic.  Otherwise  it 
remains  dislocated,  fractured,  and  painful,  or  it  grows  well,  in  time, 
we  hardly  know  how.  In  any  case  experience  is  reality,  though 
sometimes  a  painful  or  crippled  reality.  It  is  on  the  whole  sound, 
though  with  parts  now  here,  now  there,  that  are,  as  it  were,  out  of 
order. 


86  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  Whence  comes  this  disorder,  this  disloca- 
tion, this  fracture  ?  The  dislocations,  the  strains,  and  the  ruptures 
are  due  to  uneven  growth.  They  are  growing  pains,  indeed.  Some 
part  has  grown  faster,  has  changed  more  rapidly,  than  some  other 
part;  the  skeleton  of  science,  as  it  were,  is  pushing  the  musculature 
of  morality  and  religion  too  hard.  Stress  and  strain,  rupture  and 
dislocation,  are  possible  and  almost  inevitable  indeed,  just  because 
experience  as  a  whole  is  growing.  There  are  no  unrealities  for  the 
static  life,  if  such  a  thing  there  be. 

Is  this,  then,  subjectivism  ?  No  and  yes.  And  again  no.  Let 
us  recall  the  " ego-centric  predicament."  We  have  said  that  prag- 
matism insists  on  allowing  no  metaphysical  cleavage  between  a 
so-called  independent  entity  and  a  cognizing  mind.  All  cognitions, 
even  the  most  pure  logical  knowledge  acts,  are  functionally  con- 
tinuous with  all  sorts  of  psychological  and  physiological  activities. 
Ideation  is  the  clearing-house  function  of  the  socio-psycho-physical 
organism.  Thoughts  are  continuous,  organically  integral,  with 
sensations,  conations,  and  affections.  Let  there  be  no  doubt  on 
that  point.  But  sensations,  conations,  and  affections  are  func- 
tionally related  to,  organically  part  and  parcel  of,  things,  events, 
men,  stars.  The  nervous  system  is  not  merely  responsive.  It  is 
selective  and  reconstructive.  "  Stimulus-and-response "  realism 
should  not  obscure  the  fact  that  every  psychical  or  psychological 
or  physiological  event  is  a  function  of  both  the  organism  and  the 
environment,  of  both  the  stimulus  and  the  stimulated.  Experience, 
particularly  knowing,  is  not  something  that  represents  reality  or  cor- 
responds to  reality,  but  is  a  reconstructing  of  reality  by  itself,  within 
itself,  in  that  phase  or  on  that  plane  or  at  that  juncture  which  we 
designate  as  the  cognitive  activity  or  the  intellectual  process  of 
human  life ;  which  means  that  to  assign  metaphysical  status  to  any 
center  of  reality  is  as  arbitrary  as  to  assign  absolute  centricity  to 
any  organ  or  function  of  a  living  organism.  If  the  heart  is  the 
center,  what  of  the  brain  ?  If  the  stomach  is  the  center,  what  of 
the  sympathetic  system  ?  But  from  the  standpoint  of  the  heart's 
correlations  with  other  structures  and  with  other  functions  the 
heart  is  the  center,  and  from  that  of  the  stomach  the  stomach  is 
the  center.  So  from  the  standpoint  of  the  correlations  of  the  human 


CONCERNING  METHOD  87 

organism  with  those  multitudinous  activities  of  the  world  within 
the  broad  matrix  of  which  its  functions  operate,  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  ego,  reality  is  ego-centric.  Or,  more  adequately,  from 
the  standpoint  of  human  consciousness  reality  is  anthropocentric; 
and  if  we  try  to  transcend  our  human  viewpoint  we  still  use  it. 
We  are  in  an  " anthropocentric  predicament."  But  shall  we  call 
it  a  "  predicament "  ?  If  we  persist  in  doing  so,  it  is  simply  because 
we  cannot  school  ourselves  into  relinquishing  naive  realism's  rep- 
resentational notion  of  thought  and  adopting  the  recreative,  recon- 
structive doctrine  which  psychology  presents. 

But  if  this  viewpoint  be  adopted,  what  shall  we  say  of  truth 
and  error?  " Truth"  must  at  once  appear  to  be  the  character  of 
such  reconstructive  activities  within  conscious  experience  as  result 
in  harmonious  interaction  between  the  various  parts  of  experience, 
such,  in  a  word,  as  make  for  the  total  well-being  of  that  conscious 
nucleus  within  reality  which  we  humans  are.  The  test  of  the 
truth  of  an  idea  is  its  working  within  experience,  with  other  parts 
of  experience,  not  with  things  outside  of  experience.  In  general, 
the  question  of  the  truth  or  error  of  any  philosophy  or  religion  must 
mean  its  worth  as  a  great  reconstructive  function  within  the  broad 
boundaries  of  common  experience.  A  true  religion  is  a  saving  reli- 
gion. There  is  no  other  test,  and  there  never  has  been.  Humanity 
is  too  dynamic  to  accept  for  long  in  its  soul's  concerns  any  less  vital 
test  of  truth  than  it  applies  to  the  recipes  with  which  it  prepares 
its  food  or  to  the  specifications  from  which  it  builds  its  bridges. 

But,  it  may  be  objected,  the  saving  quality  of  our  specifications 
for  building  bridges  seems  to  be  objectively  conditioned,  whereas  the 
saving  quality  of  religious  faith  seems,  in  these  psychologizing  days 
at  least,  to  be  inwardly  or  subjectively  conditioned.  Is  there  not, 
then,  some  incongruousness  in  judging  a  religion  by  its  results  and 
judging  the  plan  for  a  bridge  likewise  by  its  results  ?  What  is  at 
the  bottom  of  this  difficulty  that  common  sense  seems  to  feel  in 
such  a  situation?  It  is,  I  think,  just  this:  When  the  internal  dis- 
locations to  which  I  have  referred  as  "problem"  situations  (the 
awareness  of  something  "unreal"  in  our  experience) — when  these 
occur,  we  feel  an  inward  compulsion  to  follow  a  certain  pretty 
definite  order  in  our  manipulations  and  reconstructions  by  means 


88  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

of  which  we  attempt  to  restore  the  equilibrium,  the  harmony,  of 
our  whole  experience.  What,  then,  is  this  order  that  we  feel  com- 
pelled to  follow,  and  what  is  the  source  of  the  compulsion  ? 

Briefly  the  order  is  this:  The  more  usual  sensations  have  a 
preferential  advantage  over  unusual  sensations;  habitual  attitudes 
over  novel;  sensational  data  over  conceptual  data  (in  the  sense 
of  " facts"  over  "theories");  social  standards  over  individual 
standards ;  ' '  primary  qualities ' '  over  ' '  secondary  qualities ' ' ;  visual 
and  tactual  experience  over  auditory ;  immediate  needs  over  remote 
ends;  safety  over  mere  comfort;  quantity  over  quality;  the  day's 
work  over  the  evening's  pleasure;  the  useful  over  the  aesthetic. 
Such  a  list  could  be  indefinitely  enlarged.  The  suggestions  made 
are  most  general.  What  does  this  preference  mean?  "But,"  an 
objector  interposes,  "this  order  is  not  universal  or  constant.  Men 
often  choose  the  beautiful  in  place  of  the  useful,  if  they  are  involved 
in  a  clash;  men  often  give  the  individual's  standard  right  of  way 
over  the  social  standard,  even  though  they  be  martyred  for  it;  men 
often  prefer  the  evening's  pleasure  to  the  day's  work,  even  though 
their  families  go  hungry."  Even  so.  And  it  is  just  to  these 
exceptions  that  I  shall  gladly  turn  in  a  moment.  But  I  insist  for 
the  present  that  these  preferential  advantages  are  given  by  most 
men  in  most  cases.  They  form  the  general  order  of  procedure 
when  conflicts  must  be  eliminated  in  experience;  that  is,  unless 
reflection  can  succeed  in  rearrangement  or  modification  of  one  or 
the  other  or  both  of  the  conflicting  elements,  which  is  just  the 
business  of  reflective  thinking.  But  in  such  reflection  the  one  sort 
of  element  generally  has  an  advantage.  What,  I  ask,  does  this 
preference  mean  ?  This,  that  in  the  continuous  reconstruction  of 
experience  by  means  of  and  within  itself,  what  we  mean  by  "evolu- 
tion" is  that  certain  activities  precede  other  activities  and  so  always 
condition  the  latter.  The  order  in  which  our  human  life  has 
evolved  within  the  cosmic  life  is  the  explanation  of  the  fact  that  in 
a  conflict,  say  between  a  toothache  and  a  theory  of  mental  healing, 
the  toothache  is  very  likely  to  get  the  right  of  way.  It  is  easier 
to  modify  the  theory  to  accommodate  the  tooth  than  to  modify 
the  tooth  to  accommodate  the  theory.  Physical  elements  show  a 
kind  of  pre-emption  right  when  spiritual  elements  seem  to  collide 


CONCERNING  METHOD  89 

with  them.  It  may  not  be  a  matter  of  mere  priority  or  of  mere 
repetition;  it  may  in  part  be  a  matter  of  proportion  and  organic 
structure.  There  is  no  doubt  something  more  than  mere  chance 
in  the  fact  that  mathematics  is  the  oldest  science  and  in  a  sense 
the  normative  science.  Mathematical  science  is  the  ideal  of  the 
exact  sciences,  because,  probably,  the  evolution  of  our  conceptual 
thinking  has  had  such  a  life-history  that  quantitative  and  spatial 
thought-forms  are  indeed  nearer  to  the  simpler  and  more  rudimen- 
tary reactions  between  organism  and  environment  than  qualitative 
thought-forms  are.1  In  other  words,  the  reconstructive  activities 
of  the  socio-psycho-physical  organism  have  a  life-history  that  makes 
some  more  original,  more  basic,  and  others  more  secondary,  more 
derived.  In  readjustments  within  the  complex  the  former  have  an 
advantage. 

But  the  order  I  have  spoken  of  is  only  general,  not  universal. 
The  exceptions  are  notable.  In  the  long  run  they  have  often 
proved  the  more  salutary.  The  artistic  genius  who  prefers  beauty 
to  bread,  the  martyr  who  prefers  conscience  to  comfort — these  are 
indeed  the  great  saviors  and  leaders  of  humanity.  Doubtless  the 
facts  revealed  in  the  general  rule  have  their  own  usefulness.  But 
the  only  test  is  value  in  vital  function.  The  martyrs  have  demon- 
strated that  the  priority  of  the  physical  over  the  spiritual  is  not 
necessarily  inherently  valid.  While  we  do,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
tend  to  measure  the  value  of  any  element  by  comparing  it  with 
those  which  seem  to  have  this  (evolutionally  conditioned)  priority, 
this  tendency  has  only  the  sanction  of  inveteracy,  and  must  be  cor- 
rected if  occasion  demand.  If  occasion  demand  ?  And  what  shall 
be  the  criterion  ?  When  shall  we  know  that  the  occasion  demands 
it?  And  how  shall  we  determine  which  is  right,  to  follow  the 
common  tendency  or  to  take  the  less  usual  method  of  giving  pre- 
cedence to  those  elements  of  experience  which  seem  at  a  disadvan- 
tage ?  Again,  there  is  no  standard  but  the  result.  Which  works 
best  ?  Which  achieves  the  more  desirable  results  ?  How  shall  we 
use  the  various  instruments  which  the  past  and  present  have  pre- 
pared for  us  and  put  at  our  disposal ?  "Who  shall  arbitrate?" 

1  Recall  Bergson's  statement  that  "intellectuality  and  materiality  have  been  con- 
stituted in  detail  by  reciprocal  adaptation." 


90  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

There  can  be  no  arbitrament  but  the  results.  But  how  shall 
we  evaluate  the  results,  how  compare  them?  There  is  but  one 
answer.  To  put  it  bluntly,  it  is  up  to  us.  We  are,  it  seems,  pri- 
marily selective  organisms,  and  all  that  we  are,  as  the  past  has 
produced  us,  must  rise  up  and  say  what  sort  of  result  we  most 
desire.  Is  it  attainable?  We  can  know  only  by  striving  for  it. 
What  instruments,  what  "philosophies  of  life,"  what  faiths,  what 
hypotheses  shall  we  use  ?  Those  which  experience  teaches,  as  we 
live  and  strive,  are  on  the  whole,  in  the  long  run,  for  the  largest 
situation,  the  most  serviceable,  those  which  most  adequately  attain 
the  result  we  most  deeply  desire. 

We  must  remember  that  for  no  healthy  mind  does  the  whole  of 
experience  ever  need  to  be  reorganized  and  inwardly  readjusted. 
For  the  most  part  our  experience  is  sound.  We  feel  it,  as  a  whole, 
to  be  real.  Our  world  is  always  made,  for  the  most  part,  of  fact. 
All  wholesome  progress  must  rest  its  weight,  as  it  were,  upon  this 
mass  of  fact,  of  reality.  But  we  are  truly  pragmatic  only  so  long 
as  we  remember  that  it  is  not  hopelessly  final  fact,  just  because  it 
is  not  independent  of  our  reconstructive  vital  activities.  We  can 
rest  upon  a  great  ocean  liner — solid  and  substantial  it  indeed  seems 
as  compared  with  the  unstable  waters  glimpsed  over  the  rail — not 
as  one  might  rest  in  a  prison,  but  as  one  rests  in  his  home,  because 
we  are  conscious  that  even  the  liner's  mighty  bulk  is  in  some  real 
degree  responsive  to  our  control.  In  fine,  a  fact  world  which  is 
independent  of  our  experience  is  as  likely  to  be  a  hopeless  world  as 
a  hopeful  world.  If  our  intelligence  is  not  creative,  reconstructively 
creative,  then,  so  far  as  religious  interests  are  concerned,  it  is  an 
impotent  intelligence.  Impotent  ?  Then,  say  some,  let  us  turn  to 
mysticism.  Ah,  yes,  but  your  mysticism  will  not  find  intellect  im- 
potent to  criticize  and  destroy.  It  will  undermine  the  foundations 
of  mysticism  almost  inevitably.  In  other  words,  if  intelligence  is 
not  creative,  then  its  greatest  power  is,  as  the  new  logic  of  realism 
claims,  analytical.  And  the  only  reality  which  analysis  can,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  demonstrate  is  an  abstract,  atomistic,  quanti- 
tative reality.  This  will  satisfy  the  mechanizing  tendencies  of  the 
mind  but  will  starve  the  mystical. 


CONCERNING  METHOD  91 

Realism  forces  on  us  the  enigma  of  the  existence  of  a  trans- 
empirical  object  of  belief;  instrumentalism  the  question  of  an 
empirical  objective  of  belief,  a  goal  in  which  belief-contents  are 
continually  redintegrated.  For  the  instrumentalist  the  validity 
of  the  belief-content  is  inseparable  from  the  reality  of  the  belief- 
objective,  and  the  reality  of  the  objective  is  a  matter  of  concrete 
experience.  To  seek  it  is  the  only  way  to  prove  it.  Its  reality  is 
its  realization.  Even  though  it  is  a  "  flying  goal,"  it  is  within  expe- 
rience; it  is  part  of  a  progressive  reality.  Since  it  is  a  part  of 
experience,  there  is  no  question  of  its  existence,  but  only  of  its  worth. 

I  said  that  the  belief-content  is  continually  redintegrated  in  the 
objective  of  the  belief.  This  is  a  dynamic  aspect,  especially  of  reli- 
gious experience,  and  is  vital.  Let  a  man  believe  today  that  there 
is  a  force  in  nature  making  for  righteousness.  The  very  act  of 
belief  is  itself  a  force  making  for  righteousness,  and  it  is  a  force 
which  stands  rooted  and  grounded  in  nature.  Let  a  nation  go  to 
war  to  prove  that  might  is  not  right,  that  rather  right  is  might,  and 
lo!  right  becomes  might  with  every  blow  struck,  with  every  battle 
fought.  In  a  word,  we  see  a  world  struggling  to  renew  itself  through 
human  moral  progress.  If  men  cherish  for  generations  a  faith  in 
something  they  call  divine,  behold,  the  world  through  the  power  of 
that  faith  becomes  divine.  The  more  sublimely  moral  men  believe 
the  world-life  to  be,  the  more  sublimely  moral  it  thereby  becomes 
and  is.  In  so  far  as  we  are  a  humanity  believing  in  God,  God  is,  in 
believing  humanity.  Our  little  definitions  are  brittle  and  partial. 
But  the  sweep  of  faith  in  its  vast  social  reaches,  its  historical  self- 
transformation,  its  renewing  and  creative  power,  is  beyond  the 
petty  contradictions  of  its  own  small  parts,  which  indeed  grow  just 
by  mutual  modification.  A  world  believing  in  its  own  spiritual 
significance  ipso  facto  has  spiritual  significance.  In  a  large  and 
world-historic  sense  it  is  at  least  a  minimal  truth  that  the  belief 
in  God  is  self-authenticating.  Man  has  found  God  by  seeking  him. 
Is  one's  country  something  real,  other  than  himself  ?  No.  With- 
out faith  in  one's  country  there  is  no  country.  The  faith  of 
Americans  in  America  is  America.  The  belief-content  is  redinte- 
grated in  the  objective  and  the  objective  is  redintegrated  in  the 


92  THE  LOGIC  OF  RELIGION 

content.  The  experienced  objective  is  fresh  material  for  belief  - 
content.  The  enriched  content  is  a  new  and  better  instrument  for 
a  growing  objective. 

And  so  the  world's  God  is  one  who  lives  and  moves  and  has  his 
being  in  his  world.  He  cannot  live  if  the  world  dies.  And  the 
world  lives,  and  lives  divinely,  if  we  strive  more  and  more  humanly. 
And  we  do  so  strive,  if  we  believe  in  ourselves. 

Do  we  then  believe  in  ourselves  ?  Do  we  believe  in  our  better 
selves,  the  selves  we  may  become?  Does  America  believe  in  its 
better  self  ?  Does  the  world  believe  in  its  better  self  ?  The  only 
answer  is  action,  choice,  decision.  History  is  recording  and  will 
appraise  the  great  decisions.  The  individual,  in  so  far  as  he  can 
appraise  his  own  choices,  does  know  whether  he  believes  in  himself. 
To  anyone  but  a  misanthrope,  to  anyone  who  has  escaped  the 
malady  of  him  who  says,  "The  more  I  know  of  men  the  more  I 
admire  my  dog/'  there  is  no  question  as  to  the  moral  grandeur  of 
common  human  life. 

Why,  then,  once  more,  do  men  cleave  to  "the  true,  the  good, 
the  beautiful,"  following  the  lure  of  an  ever-unfolding  and  ever- 
renewing  nobleness  ?  Why  do  men  believe  in  their  better  selves  ? 
Because,  once  more,  they  are  selective  organisms,  and  this  is  what 
they  select.  Why  try  to  go  behind  it  ?  Shall  we  say  that  this  type 
of  selection  is  itself  the  result  of  "natural  selection"?  Let  us 
say  so.  There  is  something  very  heartening  in  such  a  statement, 
after  all. 

But,  of  course,  the  notion  of  "natural  selection"  is  not  meant 
to  be  heartening.  It  is  a  generalization  meant  for  the  intellect,  not 
the  heart.  And  so  we  have  "mechanism  and  mysticism"  on  our 
hands  again.  But  if  "intelligence "  is  "creative, "  let  us  remember 
that  it  is  a  mystical  intelligence  as  well  as  a  mechanistic  intelligence, 
that  it  is  in  some  situations  extremely  mystical,  in  others  extremely 
mechanistic;  in  most  situations  of  common  life  it  has  any  one  of 
many  complexions,  ranging  anywhere  from  the  one  extreme  to  the 
other.  If  our  social  experience  is  the  evolutional  background  of 
the  mystical  moments,  and  our  manipulation  of  the  physical  envi- 
ronment, of  the  mechanistic  moments,  and  if  religion  and  the  reli- 
gious problem  consist  fundamentally  just  in  our  confronting  of  the 


CONCERNING  METHOD  93 

otherwise  physical-seeming  world  in  emotion-provoking  situations 
wherein  we  irresistibly  react  with  the  attitudes,  concepts,  and  feel- 
ings of  our  social  dispositions,  the  assertion  of  our  selfhood — if  this 
is  true,  then  the  religious  outlook  of  our  day  can  be  nothing  less 
than  our  purpose  to  direct,  by  the  most  efficient  manipulation  we 
can  devise,  all  the  energies  and  activities  which  enter  in  any  way 
into  our  experience  toward  the  realization  of  those  ends  which, 
when  our  most  wholesome  self  is  stirred  to  appraisal,  we  are  com- 
pelled, by  the  urgency  of  life  within  us,  to  choose  and  champion. 
And  the  sort  of  thought-forms,  whether  mathematical  or  poetical, 
coldly  quantitative  or  vividly  dramatic,  which  we  most  habitually 
use  will  be  determined  by  the  character  of  that  particular  small 
portion  of  the  vast  task  to  which  we  may  have  laid  our  hands. 


APPENDIX  A 
ANIMISM  OR  "ANIMATISM" 

The  general  viewpoint  of  this  paper  should  make  it  clear  that  it  is  a  mistake 
to  think  of  animism  as  characteristic  only  of  primitive  peoples.  There  are 
animistic  impulses  in  the  most  sophisticated  of  us.  It  is  not  necessary  explicitly 
to  personify  a  natural  object  to  be  animistic.  Indeed,  complete  personification 
is  but  the  completely  organized  and  consciously  maintained  stage  of  the  social 
attitude.  It  is  less  correct  to  say  that  such  vaguely  personal  feelings  and  atti- 
tudes which  modern  grown-ups  often  experience  toward  nature  and  natural 
objects  are  survivals  of  animism  than  to  recognize  that  in  the  lower  races  and  in 
children  the  preponderance  of  social  attitudes  as  compared  with  mechanical 
or  non-social  attitudes  is  simply  the  positive  aspect  of  their  lack  of  corrective 
experience  and  mechanical  control.  The  word  animism  is  simply  a  positive 
characterization  of  the  tardiness  with  which  the  non-social  aspects  of  environ- 
ment are  differentiated  from  the  social.  The  essential  difference  between  the 
physical  and  the  social  objects  in  the  child's  home  is  the  method  of  control 
required.  The  physical  object  is  normally  passive  and  requires  only  manipu- 
lation. The  social  object  is  normally  active  and  requires  constant  readjust- 
ment in  a  ceaseless  series  of  gestures  or  attitudes  or  social  stimuli  or  responses. 
Whenever  a  physical  object  behaves  in  an  unexpected  or  abnormal  manner; 
when,  in  other  words,  the  customary  manipulations  or  non-social  adjustments 
fail  of  control,  the  process  of  sophistication  is  arrested,  and  the  social  responses 
or  attitudes  are  elicited.  The  child  is  "angry"  with  the  door  that  slams 
against  him.  The  savage  is  "afraid"  of  the  roaring  river  or  the  queer-looking 
rock  or  the  poisonous  food.  Control  breaks  down.  Habitual  adjustments 
are  ineffective.  Mere  manipulation  is  inadequate  and  the  whole  organism 
is  thrown  on  the  alert.  The  dangerous  thing  is  an  "enemy."  In  the  most 
primitive  stages  the  whole  surrounding  world  of  trees,  streams,  clouds,  rocks, 
storms,  winds,  etc.,  being  so  largely  beyond  control,  evokes  the  social  attitudes 
because  the  whole  organism  is  on  the  qui  vive.  This  general  social  attitude 
toward  nature  or  the  physical  environment  is  animism.  As  methods  of  control 
develop  in  the  race  or  in  the  child,  the  environment  becomes  differentiated 
into  the  social  and  the  non-social.  (The  question  of  the  differentiation  of 
the  social  into  "human"  and  "animal"  will  be  referred  to  in  Appendix  B.) 

Now  if  animism  be  understood  as  the  prevalence  among  primitive  peoples 
of  these  instinctive  social  attitudes  toward  the  phenomena  of  nature,  the 
question  whether  it  is  a  form  of  religion  will,  in  the  light  of  my  analysis,  find 
a  simple  answer.  Animism  is  the  general  field  within  which  develop  those 
"more  vital  adjustments  which  we  call  religious  ceremonies  and  beliefs.  To  try 
to  determine  at  what  stage  animism  is  pre-religious  or  religion  is  pre-animistic 
is  an  arbitrary  proceeding.  Logically  animism  and  religion  are  identical. 
Practically  we  are  inclined  to  restrict  the  name  "religion"  to  the  more  vital 
or  important  examples  of  the  animistic  attitude. 

94 


APPENDIX  B 
TOTEMISM 

What  is  the  relation  between  a  religious  totemism  and  a  possible  pre- 
religious  totemism?  Now  if  religion  is  a  social  attitude  toward  the  non- 
human,  it  may  be  urged  that  there  never  was  a  time  when  men  were  not 
religious,  since  the  social  attitudes  are  primary.  But  the  beginning  of  religion 
will  be  in  the  rise  of  the  differentiation  between  the  human  and  the  non-human. 
"In  a  pure  system  of  totemism  the  human  and  the  non-human  members  ..... 
are  not  distinguished "  (Cornford,  From  Religion  to  Philosophy,  p.  76).  "Every 
totem  clan  traverses  what  seems  to  us  the  natural  boundary  between  man  and 
other  creatures,  and  brings  a  department  of  nature  inside  a  subdivision  of 

society It  is  only  when  the  dim  consciousness  of  a  distinction  has 

dawned  and  the  nature  and  behavior  of  (say)  an  emu  begin  to  appear  in  some 
degree  different  from  and  independent  of  the  nature  and  behavior  of  emu-men 
that  the  first  step  is  taken  on  the  road  to  religion"  (Cornford,  op.  cit.,  p.  91). 
"This  crisis  closes  the  first  or  pure  stage  of  magic — the  birthplace  of  what 
is  currently  called  religion"  (ibid.,  p.  92).  "In  this  primary  stage  we  find  a 
pre-religious  condition  of  man-kind;  for  in  the  definition  of  religion  we  include 
some  representation  of  a  power  that  is '  not  ourselves. ' "  Logically  the  religious 
quality  emerges,  in  social  attitudes  toward  the  non-human,  with  the  dawn  of  a 
consciousness  of  its  non-humanness;  or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  with  the  dawn 
of  a  human  self-consciousness.  Cornford,  however,  confuses  religion  and 
morality  by  failing  to  analyze  into  its  human  and  non-human  elements  that 
"power  not  ourselves,"  a  consciousness  of  which  he  accepts  as  the  test  for  the 
presence  of  religion.  "The  collective  consciousness  is  super-individual.  It 

resides  of  course  in  the  group In  so  far  as  this  power  is  not  myself  and 

greater  than  myself,  it  is  a  moral  or  restraining  force  which  can  and  does 
impose  upon  the  individual  the  necessity  of  observing  the  uniform  behavior  of 
the  group.  With  the  first  dawn  of  a  distinction  between  myself  and  the  social 
consciousness  comes  the  first  shadowy  representation  which  may  be  called 
religious  or  moral"  (op.  cit.,  p.  81).  Is  it  not  much  simpler  and  more  satis- 
factory to  say  that  in  so  far  as  that  "power  not  myself"  which  controls  me  is 
the  will  or  custom  of  my  group,  the  control  is  nascently  moral,  and  hi  so  far 
as  that  "power  not  myself,"  even  though  mediated  by  group  custom,  is  really 
a  non-human  or  superhuman  force  or  principle,  the  control  is  of  the  religious 
sort? 


95 


APPENDIX  C 

MAGIC 

There  has  been  much  discussion  as  to  whether  magic  and  religion  are 
identical  or  different.  Ames  and  King  hold  that  magic  is  of  two  sorts,  group 
magic  and  individual  magic,  and  that  the  former  is  religious  and  the  latter 
non-religious.  "Not  all  magic  but  only  such  as  belongs  to  group  activities  enter 
into  religion"  (Ames,  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  no).  "Public 
magic  to  all  intents  and  purposes  is  identical  with  primitive  religion.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  religion  becomes  subservient  to  anti-social  or  merely  private 
ends,  it  is  scarcely  to  be  distinguished  from  sorcery"  (King,  The  Development 
of  Religion,  p.  195).  King  thus  defines  sorcery:  "The  sorcerer  is  one  who 
deals  privately  with  secret  powers,  or  at  least  with  means  not  generally  known 
to  the  group,  and  the  object  is  almost  always  private  gain  or  personal  ven- 
geance" (ibid.,  p.  191). 

Let  me  make  some  further  quotations  from  King,  on  the  basis  of  which  I 
wish  to  offer  a  criticism  which  will  make  my  own  position  clearer. 

"If  these  practices  [i.e.,  "the  great  mass  of  unreflective  spontaneous 
reactions  of  the  psycho-physical  organism"]  had  chanced  to  be  more  closely 
associated  with  the  evolution  of  tribal  consciousness  and  tribal  interests,  they 
might  have  furnished  the  nuclei  of  rituals  and  definite  religious  ideas.  If  they 
had  been  more  closely  connected  with  lines  of  individual  interest,  so  as  to 
furnish  a  technique  available  to  the  individual  for  carrying  out  his  personal 
desires,  they  would  have  formed  the  basis  of  magic"  (ibid.,  p.  189).  "Magic 
is  simply  primitive  man's  science,  and  there  is  nothing  to  hinder  the  tribe  from 
availing  itself  of  the  scientific  knowledge  in  the  hands  of  its  members.  Many 
social  groups  may  and  have  adopted  magical  practices.  Magic  furnishes 
the  community  with  a  technique  for  doing  many  simple  things In  com- 
munities of  loose  organization  magic  might  be  so  thoroughly  taken  up  by  the 
group  as  to  be  indistinguishable  from  religion. "  Among  the  North  American 
Indians,  in  general,  "medicine  practices  cannot  be  differentiated  from  religious 
rites  and  observances"  (op.  cit.,  p.  203). 

As  to  sorcery:  "When  a  man  feels  he  is  capable  of  becoming  a  sorcerer, 
he  ventures  forth  quite  alone,  until  he  comes  to  the  mouth  of  the  cave  where 
the  spirits  dwell"  (ibid.,  p.  198).  "Having  been  instructed  by  the  sorcerer 
in  the  mysteries  of  the  Great  Mother,  the  master  of  divination  turns  him  out 
into  the  bush  all  by  himself  to  the  contemplation  of  the  mysteries  that  lie 
all  about  him"  (ibid.,  p.  198). 

Now  if  the  criterion  for  the  religious  quality  is  the  "public  and  social" 
character  of  any  activity,  and  if  magic  is  "public  and  social,"  of  course  it  is, 

96 


APPENDIX  C:  MAGIC  97 

ipso  facto,  religion.  But  if  we  should  have  reason  to  feel  that  private  magic 
also  may  have  a  religious  aspect,  what  becomes  of  the  "public  and  social" 
criterion  ?  Of  course,  we  may  argue  in  a  circle  and  see  religion  where  we  are 
predisposed  to  look  for  it.  But  I  must  confess  that  if  I  were  taking  a  course 
in  sorcery — standing  alone  in  the  mouth  of  the  cave  where  the  spirits  dwell — 
or  contemplating  the  mysteries  of  the  Great  Mother  all  about  me,  if  my  experi- 
ence in  such  a  situation  would  not  be  distinctly  religious  then  I  do  not  know 
what  the  "feel "  of  religion  is.  Has  not  many  a  victim  been  burnt  as  a  sorcerer, 
only  to  be  recognized  by  succeeding  generations  as  a  martyr  to  some  religious 
faith  ?  Would  it  not  be  more  adequate  to  say  that  the  practicer  of  a  private 
magic  may  be  a  sorcerer  so  far  as  the  tribe  is  concerned,  a  prophet  or  priest, 
a  religious  person,  so  far  as  his  relationship  with  the  non-human  is  concerned  ? 
And  if  his  "sorceries, "  as  in  the  case  of  North  American  Indians,  should  prove 
beneficial  rather  than  detrimental  to  the  tribe,  will  he  not  be  recognized  as  a 
prophet  by  his  tribe,  and  no  longer  called  a  sorcerer  ?  We  have  known  enough 
of  non-social  and  even  anti-social  religion  in  modern  times  to  enable  us  to  avoid 
confusing  a  lack  of  public  spirit  with  a  lack  of  religion.  And  when  the  magic  is 
used  by  the  group,  is  not  its  religious  quality  still  due  to  the  same  factor  as 
made  it  religious  in  the  prophet-sorcerer  ?  Moreover,  this  public  magic  may  be 
called  primitive  man's  science,  if  we  are  thinking  merely  of  the  practical 
results  achieved  or  attempted.  Indeed,  both  public  and  private  magic  may  be 
considered  as  non-religious — a  mere  customary  use  of  certain  formulae  or  per- 
formance of  specific  acts,  out  of  which  the  original  religious  quality  has  dis- 
appeared by  sheer  weight  of  habit  or  absence  of  cause  for  emotional  interest. 
Indeed,  many  magical  acts  may  never  have  had  any  religious  origin,  being  simply 
the  repetition  of  chance  "lucky"  movements  or  methods.  When,  however, 
by  reason  of  enhanced  emotional  quality  the  group  consciousness  becomes 
aware  of  some  other-than-the-group  force  or  power,  the  magical  ceremonies 
take  on  the  religious  complexion. 


APPENDIX  D 

MYSTICISM 

The  union  of  functional  and  social  psychology  which  forms  the  background 
of  my  thesis  should  serve  to  indicate  the  normal  place  of  mysticism  in  religious 
experience.  The  primacy  of  instinctive  organic  responses,  their  organization 
into  habit,  the  production  by  habit  of  cerebral  processes  which  we  call  idea- 
tion, the  rise  of  emotion  as  the  accompaniment  of  the  inhibition  of  action  by 
reason  of  conflicting  tendencies  to  act,  and  the  solution  of  the  conflict  by 
means  of  intellectual  or  ideational  processes  or  reconstructions,  the  primary 
preponderance  of  the  social  instinctive  responses,  the  tendency  of  the  organism 
when  on  the  qui  vive,  when  subject  to  intense  or  vague  stimulation,  to  exhibit 
the  social  attitudes,  these  briefly  are  facts  which  underlie  the  following  state- 
ment of  the  place  of  mysticism  in  religion. 

Pratt,  in  his  Psychology  of  Religious  Belief,  contrasts  three  types  of  religion: 
that  of  credulity,  that  of  rationalism,  that  of  feeling.  He  can,  of  course, 
account  for  the  breakdown  of  the  first  two,  but  believes  that  the  third  is  indis- 
pensable and  inevitable.  He  claims  that  "the  whole  man  should  be  trusted" 
(op.  cit.,  p.  27),  and  the  "whole  man"  will  continue  to  experience  "the  religion 
of  feeling,"  in  which  the  "belief  in  God  ....  is  ....  a  vital  rather  than  a 
theoretical  matter"  (ibid.,  p.  293).  Now  if  my  presuppositions  are  correct,  the 
"whole  man"  will  react  to  his  environment  instinctively,  correcting  his  actions 
by  means  of  the  ideational  equipment,  which  he  gradually  develops  and  elabo- 
rates; in  degree  as  his  actions  are  inhibited  by  conflicting  suggestions,  emotion 
or  feeling  is  aroused;  as  successful  reactions  are  established  in  habit,  the  accom- 
panying ideas  are  fixed  and  feeling  dies  away;  as  the  habitual  reactions  are 
rendered  futile  by  some  new  situation,  the  ideational  accompaniments  of  these 
habitual  reactions  are  rendered  useless  or  "false " ;  the  following  period  of  stress 
and  strain  is  comparatively  meager  in  ideas  of  any  settled  quality  and  rich  in 
the  emotional  element;  the  less  definite  adjustments  of  the  new  situation  will 
be  preponderantly  social  in  their  type.  In  situations  of  the  less  definite,  less 
habitual  sort,  obviously  the  inarticulate  emotional  responses  will  preponderate, 
and  this  is  the  mystical  phase  of  religion.  In  the  more  finished,  elaborated 
adjustments  the  ideational  or  intellectual  element  is  prominent,  and  the  feeling 
factor  is  relatively  small.  Furthermore,  the  vague  emotional  phase  will  be 
normally  of  the  social  instinctive  type,  so  that  in  the  mystical  mood  we  are 
aware  of  a  "presence"  of  some  vague  sort.  This  inarticulate  awareness 
tends,  of  course,  to  become  articulate;  the  mystical  mood  will  probably  leave 
a  creedal  deposit  of  some  sort;  fervor,  to  the  great  disgust  of  the  prophet,  tends 
in  the  average  man  to  lose  itself  in  a  habit  or  a  formula.  So  Pratt  is  quite 

98 


APPENDIX  D:  MYSTICISM'  99 

correct  in  saying  that  "the  belief  in  God  of  the  religion  of  feeling  is  a  vital 
rather  than  a  theoretical  matter" — it  is  a  non-intellectual  social  response  to  a 
vaguely  comprehended  situation,  a  social  attitude  which  can  find  no  better 
explanation  of  itself  than  to  say  that  it  is  aware  of  a  "Presence"  in  the  world 
in  Nature.  But  he  fails  entirely  to  grasp  the  relative  significance  of  the  three 
types  of  religion  when  he  puts  them  in  the  order  of  credulity,  rationalism, 
feeling.  It  would  be  more  accurate  to  say,  that  in  every  religious  experience 
there  are  normally  three  stages:  first,  the  feeling  stage,  in  which  adjustment 
has  not  yet  achieved  explicit  expression;  secondly,  credulity,  in  which  the 
ideational  accompaniments  of  adjustment  are  comparatively  crude  and  uncriti- 
cized,  relative  to  the  more  immediate  situation  rather  than  to  the  larger 
implications  and  connections  thereof;  thirdly,  the  rational  or  even  rationalistic, 
in  which  the  ideational  factors  tend  to  become  more  and  more  elaborate,  the 
situation  so  familiar  as  to  fail  to  elicit  any  great  emotional  interest,  decidedly 
other  than  what  we  mean  by  a  "vital"  situation.  Our  present  religious  situa- 
tion, to  be  sure,  is  one  which  seems  to  suggest  that  hereafter  we  can  have 
only  the  "feeling"  type  of  religion,  for  the  new  universe  in  which  modern  men 
are  trying  to  make  themselves  at  home  is  so  vast,  so  many  new  factors  are 
being  revealed  almost  every  day;  hi  a  word,  the  problem  situation  is  so  novel, 
so  varied,  so  boundless,  that  a  well-articulated,  compact,  fully  elaborated 
ideational  adjustment  seems  almost  beyond  the  range  of  possibility.  Mysti- 
cism seems  to  promise  the  fullest  satisfaction  we  dare  hope  for.  We  can  but 
trust  "the  whole  man"  in  his  deeper,  more  instinctive,  more  emotional  parts. 
But  the  whole  man  is  a  thinking  organism,  and  can -hardly  be  expected  to  be 
forever  content  with  mere  feeling.  Mysticism  is  sure  sooner  or  later  to  develop 
a  bony  framework  of  ideas.  The  demands  of  modern  life  upon  "the  whole 
man"  are  so  great  that  both  endo-  and  exo-skeletons  are  imperatively  needed  if 
progress  is  to  be  achieved  in  any  definable  direction,  and  if  we  are  not  to  suffer 
overlong  from  the  buffetings  of  uncertainty. 

The  mysticism  of  the  traditional  type  is  accounted  for  on  the  same  grounds.1 
The  stimulation  of  unusually  sensitive  personalities  by  the  tremendous  social 
or  moral  appeal  of  the  Christian  divine  society,  in  conjunction  with  the  vague- 
ness and  uncertainty  which  an  intangible  reality  necessarily  entailed,  logically 
produced  a  stress-and-strain  situation  in  which  feeling  preponderates  and  clear 
ideas  are  impossible.  This  mood  is  naturally  accentuated  by  inhibition  of 
action  which  the  saint's  withdrawal  necessarily  produced.  In  a  word,  it  is  a 
situation  in  which  there  is  a  tremendous  stimulation  to  the  social  nature,  but 
in  which  no  action  is  either  possible  or  called  for,  and  hence  the  floods  of  feeling 
and  ecstatic  experience,  and  the  intense  sense  of  a  "Presence." 

1  In  chap.  Ill,  I  distinguish  between  "classical"  or  naturalistic  mysticism  and 
what  I  have  referred  to  as  the  "traditional  type,"  i.e.,  the  supernaturalistic  type  of 
mysticism.  This  distinction  does  not  in  any  way  invalidate  the  psychological  sug- 
gestions in  this  Appendix. 


\ 


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